ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I'm running. I'm almost at the bottom of my window with slack. You know the little like the column of icons

00:00:04 ◼   ► I'm pretty much almost full like all the different slacks. You're on. Yeah, my god. I'm in three destiny slacks alone

00:00:11 ◼   ► Just for destiny even before you drove like podcast tech friend my work has one now

00:00:18 ◼   ► I think my work has multiple ones are only in one of them

00:00:20 ◼   ► Slack proliferation is a thing so you aren't in all the ones for work, but you are in multiple destiny slacks. Yep

00:00:28 ◼   ► I'm not on all the Destiny's lacks that exist. I'm just yeah people can get their acts together with their destiny's likes

00:00:33 ◼   ► All right, so we want to actually talk about something that's relevant tonight. Do we ever really not really what is relevant? Yeah

00:00:42 ◼   ► Important follow-up. That's not really follow-up. I guess we could even call it follow out

00:00:46 ◼   ► You have a new show. No we couldn't

00:00:48 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, I started a new developer podcast with our friend underscore David Smith

00:00:55 ◼   ► who is the app developer and podcast indexer extraordinaire.

00:01:00 ◼   ► He and I talked about it last summer at WBC,

00:01:02 ◼   ► well this summer at WBC,

00:01:04 ◼   ► talked about doing it and then just, you know,

00:01:06 ◼   ► life got in the way for both of us

00:01:07 ◼   ► and now we finally got it together and are doing it

00:01:10 ◼   ► and we published our first episode today.

00:01:12 ◼   ► So, so far it's doing well.

00:01:14 ◼   ► Check it out, it's called Under the Radar

00:01:16 ◼   ► and it's basically, you know,

00:01:18 ◼   ► he had his show Developing Perspective

00:01:21 ◼   ► and he has now basically ended it to do this.

00:01:24 ◼   ► this is kind of the successor to that.

00:01:26 ◼   ► I, back in the day, did build and analyze,

00:01:28 ◼   ► and so this is kind of the combination of those two shows.

00:01:30 ◼   ► It is kind of like the successor to build and analyze

00:01:33 ◼   ► and developing perspective.

00:01:35 ◼   ► It's really a developer-focused show.

00:01:37 ◼   ► Like this show is kind of more general Apple tech world.

00:01:40 ◼   ► That show is really developers,

00:01:43 ◼   ► and it's limited to only 30 minutes,

00:01:45 ◼   ► so it's a quick, you know, 30 minutes a week,

00:01:47 ◼   ► so it's not too time-costly to subscribe,

00:01:50 ◼   ► so go check it out.

00:01:51 ◼   ► - That's excellent.

00:01:53 ◼   ► - It's for developers, developers, developers.

00:01:56 ◼   ► So at this point, it is unequivocal

00:01:58 ◼   ► that all of us have shows on Relay FM.

00:02:02 ◼   ► I mean, I know you had Top Four before this,

00:02:05 ◼   ► and so this is, at what point do we join Relay?

00:02:09 ◼   ► I mean, at this point, we're pretty much there.

00:02:12 ◼   ► - People have asked.

00:02:13 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:02:15 ◼   ► Honestly, it's worth talking about briefly

00:02:16 ◼   ► if anybody actually cares about the answer.

00:02:18 ◼   ► The answer basically is that we didn't start on Relay,

00:02:20 ◼   ► and there's not really, as much as we love Relay,

00:02:24 ◼   ► we don't really have a lot of reason to move ATP there

00:02:27 ◼   ► because it's already going on its own,

00:02:29 ◼   ► it's already independent, we already have our own ad sales

00:02:31 ◼   ► and hosting and everything set up already.

00:02:33 ◼   ► So there's just not much reason to move it in.

00:02:35 ◼   ► But starting a new show, David and I,

00:02:38 ◼   ► we didn't even question, of course we're gonna start

00:02:40 ◼   ► on Relay just because, you know, there's,

00:02:42 ◼   ► and I've talked about podcast networks before

00:02:44 ◼   ► and I've been against them in certain ways

00:02:45 ◼   ► and for them in certain others.

00:02:47 ◼   ► And the reality is a podcast network is a trade-off.

00:02:50 ◼   ► You lose control, you lose some of the money,

00:02:53 ◼   ► and you lose some of the branding.

00:02:54 ◼   ► But what you get is you have to do a lot less work

00:02:57 ◼   ► to make the shows.

00:02:58 ◼   ► And so depending on what you need the show to do

00:03:00 ◼   ► and what your priorities are and how much time you have,

00:03:04 ◼   ► that can determine kind of where you fall on that.

00:03:07 ◼   ► And so for this new show, given where we were,

00:03:10 ◼   ► we decided a network was the right move

00:03:12 ◼   ► for our needs right now.

00:03:14 ◼   ► - That makes sense.

00:03:15 ◼   ► And folks at Relay are really awesome.

00:03:17 ◼   ► And they're all good friends of ours,

00:03:19 ◼   ► and we really enjoy them.

00:03:20 ◼   ► So, yep, I mean, I think if ATP were to start tomorrow,

00:03:23 ◼   ► it probably would be on relay,

00:03:24 ◼   ► but at this point, don't fix what ain't broke.

00:03:27 ◼   ► So. - Yep.

00:03:28 ◼   ► - All right, so now that we're done with follow out,

00:03:30 ◼   ► asterisk not Syracuse approved, let's do some follow up.

00:03:34 ◼   ► Somebody wrote in dusto, that's gotta be pronounced wrong

00:03:39 ◼   ► 'cause there's a fancy strike through the O.

00:03:41 ◼   ► Masterson wrote into us-- - It's dust zero.

00:03:44 ◼   ► - Dust zero, that's true.

00:03:46 ◼   ► That is actually how I write zeros.

00:03:47 ◼   ► Anyways, this individual said,

00:03:49 ◼   ► Another thing about the Facebook app thing, it auto-plays videos in your timeline and

00:03:53 ◼   ► even muted videos take over iOS's audio.

00:03:56 ◼   ► This is, if you remember, because Facebook claims that "Oh, it was just an accidental

00:04:01 ◼   ► bug that we had videos that played and never released the audio session and that's why

00:04:07 ◼   ► we were backgrounded for forever."

00:04:10 ◼   ► That still strikes me as a little weird and a little aggressive for them to auto-play

00:04:14 ◼   ► videos.

00:04:15 ◼   ► But, I don't know, it seems like everyone's kind of starting to believe that this is really

00:04:19 ◼   ► They're ineptitude and not nefarious actions. Is that what the going theory is now?

00:04:23 ◼   ► Well the fact that they autoplay that was brought up by a couple people

00:04:25 ◼   ► I just put this one in there because like like hey

00:04:28 ◼   ► I didn't watch a video on the Facebook app, and it's still eating my battery

00:04:31 ◼   ► Well, you didn't probably watch a video as in intentionally tap on a little play button

00:04:36 ◼   ► But if you just launch Facebook apparently and scroll through your timeline

00:04:39 ◼   ► It you know it considers it will start playing it it will grab the audio session even if I guess even if you just scroll past

00:04:45 ◼   ► It or whatever so a lot of people are sort of

00:04:48 ◼   ► unknowingly

00:04:50 ◼   ► Implicitly playing videos merely by launching the app and scrolling through a timeline which would further explain why?

00:04:55 ◼   ► You know that this audio session bug thing is biting lots of people even people who don't have any recollection ever watching a video

00:05:03 ◼   ► It makes sense

00:05:05 ◼   ► All right Jeff Strobel wrote in and told us that he knows how to have spotlight index his Synology

00:05:12 ◼   ► 1815 plus which one I don't remember which one of us was talking about that because it wasn't me

00:05:16 ◼   ► - I was, yeah, 'cause I was saying how one of the reasons

00:05:18 ◼   ► why I like direct attached or iSCSI

00:05:21 ◼   ► over regular network shares is that regular network shares

00:05:24 ◼   ► don't have the spotlight integration,

00:05:27 ◼   ► they don't have system integration,

00:05:28 ◼   ► and I just hate how slow it is to connect to

00:05:31 ◼   ► and browse network shares still in 2015,

00:05:33 ◼   ► even over wired gigabit networks.

00:05:36 ◼   ► - Fair enough, so Jeff has the appropriate commands

00:05:40 ◼   ► that are sitting in our show notes,

00:05:42 ◼   ► which are not helpful to the listeners,

00:05:43 ◼   ► and reading this out will also be not helpful,

00:05:45 ◼   ► So we will link to something, some way, somehow,

00:05:48 ◼   ► that explains this.

00:05:50 ◼   ► - Extax exchange question that answers this.

00:05:51 ◼   ► I remember doing it back when the spotlight

00:05:53 ◼   ► was first introduced, like one of the bragging rights is,

00:05:54 ◼   ► oh, we'll even index your network.

00:05:56 ◼   ► This was back in the AFP days.

00:05:58 ◼   ► We'll even index your network shares.

00:06:01 ◼   ► I don't know what the status of that is,

00:06:03 ◼   ► like if it doesn't do it by default anymore or whatever,

00:06:05 ◼   ► but it's bottom line is this command line tools,

00:06:07 ◼   ► but you can force it to.

00:06:08 ◼   ► It's the MD util command line

00:06:09 ◼   ► and the MD import command line.

00:06:11 ◼   ► If you just read the man pages for them,

00:06:12 ◼   ► you can figure it out.

00:06:13 ◼   ► to put a link to the Stack Exchange question

00:06:16 ◼   ► in the show notes so you can follow through it

00:06:18 ◼   ► and figure out how to enable it yourself.

00:06:21 ◼   ► I don't know what it will be like.

00:06:22 ◼   ► I'm not even sure how it keeps track

00:06:24 ◼   ► of what has been updated there.

00:06:25 ◼   ► Does it periodically rescan the whole drive?

00:06:27 ◼   ► Anyway, maybe you just have to run it on a schedule

00:06:31 ◼   ► to rescan the drive, but if this is something you wanna do,

00:06:35 ◼   ► you can try it.

00:06:36 ◼   ► - Excellent.

00:06:37 ◼   ► All right, and Rich Knight wrote in

00:06:40 ◼   ► to ask us some questions about Google and Stitcher.

00:06:45 ◼   ► He says, it seems that the biggest issue that you guys

00:06:47 ◼   ► have with these apps-- applies equally to Google and Stitcher--

00:06:50 ◼   ► is that they re-host your files.

00:06:51 ◼   ► That impacts your stats, and you lose control over quality,

00:06:54 ◼   ► making changes, et cetera.

00:06:56 ◼   ► My question is, why do they bother?

00:06:58 ◼   ► Let's imagine Google built the exact same app

00:07:00 ◼   ► but without re-hosting.

00:07:01 ◼   ► If they want to inject ads at the beginning or at the end,

00:07:03 ◼   ► they can still do it client-side.

00:07:04 ◼   ► They could still build interesting things

00:07:06 ◼   ► like full-text search that John had mentioned by simply

00:07:09 ◼   ► downloading your file once to index it, it wouldn't tick off the publishers who would

00:07:14 ◼   ► still have control over their files and download stats, bandwidth costs shift back to the publishers,

00:07:19 ◼   ► et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. This is all good for them. So what's the big benefit

00:07:24 ◼   ► of rehosting in the first place?

00:07:25 ◼   ► So, this is, again, the podcast thing specifically, Google's podcast thing with Google Play Music

00:07:31 ◼   ► they announced and Stitcher, the podcast thing, rehosting people's podcast files before serving

00:07:35 ◼   ► them and then therefore requiring publisher approval and denying publisher stats and everything

00:07:39 ◼   ► else. The main benefits are really, it comes down to control and consistency. If you rehost

00:07:47 ◼   ► the files yourself as the intermediary service provider, you can first of all, you can guarantee

00:07:51 ◼   ► that they will be there and they will load quickly. Because if you just rely, you know,

00:07:56 ◼   ► Overcast doesn't work the way, Overcast and most podcast apps, just, they just, they get

00:08:00 ◼   ► the files directly from the publisher's server, which could be a terrible little web hosting

00:08:05 ◼   ► it could be a nice CDN, it could be something very far away

00:08:08 ◼   ► or very geographically close.

00:08:10 ◼   ► And there's wide variety in transfer speeds,

00:08:13 ◼   ► download speeds for podcast files

00:08:15 ◼   ► that just come directly from publishers.

00:08:16 ◼   ► So if you're running a service like Google Play Music

00:08:18 ◼   ► or Stitcher, you want like some kind of big,

00:08:20 ◼   ► integrated experience, you don't want to take the risk

00:08:23 ◼   ► of wondering whether someone else's server

00:08:26 ◼   ► will actually be able to serve you the file

00:08:27 ◼   ► at the moment that that user requests it.

00:08:30 ◼   ► So that's the biggest reason,

00:08:31 ◼   ► and you don't know how quickly they will serve it too.

00:08:33 ◼   ► So that's the biggest reason why they want to do this.

00:08:36 ◼   ► There's also, you know, there's other additional things

00:08:38 ◼   ► you can do, for instance, like, you know,

00:08:41 ◼   ► Rich mentioned that Google is most certainly

00:08:44 ◼   ► gonna do the transcription thing,

00:08:45 ◼   ► that it does YouTube videos for search,

00:08:47 ◼   ► and you could indeed fetch the file once,

00:08:50 ◼   ► you know, transcribe it, and then continue to send people

00:08:54 ◼   ► to the original to download it,

00:08:55 ◼   ► but then you have to like manage,

00:08:57 ◼   ► do I still have the most up-to-date copy?

00:08:58 ◼   ► You have to pull it periodically to make sure

00:09:00 ◼   ► you still have the most up-to-date copy,

00:09:02 ◼   ► then you have to update it if it's changed,

00:09:03 ◼   ► You never quite can be sure necessarily

00:09:05 ◼   ► if the people are gonna get the exact version you got.

00:09:08 ◼   ► Additionally, and this is actually one thing

00:09:09 ◼   ► that might be a problem for Play Music,

00:09:12 ◼   ► one thing that's really taking off big time

00:09:15 ◼   ► in big podcasting, in the big,

00:09:17 ◼   ► like the public radio kind of shows,

00:09:19 ◼   ► the big name shows that they get lots of downloads and stuff,

00:09:22 ◼   ► is the dynamic ad insertion,

00:09:24 ◼   ► where every copy of the file they serve

00:09:27 ◼   ► has a different set of ads in it.

00:09:29 ◼   ► And the idea here is they wanna capture,

00:09:32 ◼   ► So suppose they sell an ad for a certain number of downloads.

00:09:37 ◼   ► They wanna make sure that once those downloads have happened

00:09:40 ◼   ► they can put a different ad in there

00:09:41 ◼   ► that they've sold separately.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And for lots of reasons, I honestly don't think

00:09:45 ◼   ► this is a very good idea, but regardless of what I think,

00:09:48 ◼   ► people are doing it.

00:09:49 ◼   ► This is where a lot of the market is moving.

00:09:52 ◼   ► And so if you make some secret requests to the same file

00:09:55 ◼   ► on some of these big networks,

00:09:56 ◼   ► you will get actually different copies of the file

00:09:59 ◼   ► with different ads that might even be

00:10:00 ◼   ► slightly different lengths.

00:10:01 ◼   ► So you can't even link to a timestamp

00:10:03 ◼   ► in the middle of the file

00:10:04 ◼   ► because it might be a different timestamp

00:10:06 ◼   ► depending on who downloads it.

00:10:07 ◼   ► Anyway, all of that is kind of messed up

00:10:10 ◼   ► by systems like this that cache the file and everything,

00:10:11 ◼   ► but it also kind of throws a wrench

00:10:13 ◼   ► in anything like Overcast that assumes

00:10:16 ◼   ► that the file will be generally the same

00:10:18 ◼   ► if you go to fetch it a second time.

00:10:20 ◼   ► So there's justification on both sides

00:10:23 ◼   ► for why you would rehost the files as a service provider

00:10:26 ◼   ► versus why you would want to pass them through.

00:10:28 ◼   ► Neither side is perfect.

00:10:31 ◼   ► As a publisher, I greatly prefer that they pass them through

00:10:35 ◼   ► to us, but that is not necessarily their goal.

00:10:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, that makes sense.

00:10:41 ◼   ► - Speaking of ad insertion, have you heard about people

00:10:43 ◼   ► who put different ads into their archive shows?

00:10:47 ◼   ► They'll put their archive shows up,

00:10:48 ◼   ► and then a year later they'll go through

00:10:50 ◼   ► and change all the ads in the year-old shows?

00:10:52 ◼   ► - It's exactly the same platform, yeah,

00:10:53 ◼   ► exactly the same thing, and that's one of the ways

00:10:56 ◼   ► they can justify it.

00:10:57 ◼   ► We don't really do a lot of archive downloads

00:11:00 ◼   ► because we are a topical news show most of the time.

00:11:03 ◼   ► But there's a lot of shows out there,

00:11:06 ◼   ► kind of like the magazine style,

00:11:07 ◼   ► like human interest kind of shows,

00:11:08 ◼   ► that are fairly timeless.

00:11:09 ◼   ► And so those shows tend to get way more archive downloads

00:11:14 ◼   ► than a show like ours.

00:11:16 ◼   ► Sometimes those are even the majority of their downloads

00:11:18 ◼   ► for certain kinds of shows.

00:11:20 ◼   ► So they have different needs really.

00:11:22 ◼   ► If they tell an advertiser,

00:11:24 ◼   ► you know, we generally get this number of downloads,

00:11:26 ◼   ► you want to sponsor episode 200 or whatever,

00:11:29 ◼   ► and then episode 200 ends up in the archives getting five times as many downloads as usual

00:11:34 ◼   ► because it has longevity there, then those publishers want to get more value out of that.

00:11:40 ◼   ► I honestly think this is a bad idea because I think that those surpluses that happen here

00:11:45 ◼   ► and there are actually already priced in to the premium CPM rate that we are able to get

00:11:51 ◼   ► as podcasters compared to other media. So I think this is actually a terrible idea that

00:11:56 ◼   ► surplus has already been priced in and that we are actually eroding that by doing systems

00:12:00 ◼   ► like this. And therefore, I think it will almost certainly result in a noticeable drop

00:12:06 ◼   ► in podcast ad CPMs. But that's just me.

00:12:09 ◼   ► I think about people listening to old episodes of Hypercritical and I wonder like, are some

00:12:13 ◼   ► of those companies that we had at adforce still in business? Eventually that's going

00:12:17 ◼   ► to be the thing.

00:12:18 ◼   ► Right. And they aren't always. There's obviously like, there is an argument to be made that

00:12:23 ◼   ► you should be kind of re-monetizing,

00:12:26 ◼   ► ugh, that sounds terrible,

00:12:27 ◼   ► re-monetizing these old episodes

00:12:29 ◼   ► after a certain number of views

00:12:31 ◼   ► or after a certain amount of time.

00:12:32 ◼   ► You can make that argument,

00:12:34 ◼   ► but I think it will have negative effects

00:12:36 ◼   ► that I'm not sure people are fully thinking through.

00:12:39 ◼   ► But it doesn't really matter

00:12:41 ◼   ► because if enough of the market does this,

00:12:43 ◼   ► it will erode the CPMs anyway,

00:12:45 ◼   ► and so even if you aren't doing it,

00:12:47 ◼   ► it will be affecting you, so you might as well do it.

00:12:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, I like the idea of like,

00:12:52 ◼   ► when you watch old television programs,

00:12:53 ◼   ► like the most fun is watching the period appropriate ads

00:12:57 ◼   ► that run on them.

00:12:58 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:12:58 ◼   ► But yeah, eventually people are gonna be going back,

00:13:00 ◼   ► "Oh, remember Squarespace?"

00:13:02 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:13:03 ◼   ► - Gosh, that would be crazy.

00:13:05 ◼   ► All right, any other follow up that we need to talk about?

00:13:09 ◼   ► Jon, do you have any other follow out

00:13:10 ◼   ► that you would like to cover?

00:13:12 ◼   ► - Don't even know what you're talking about.

00:13:14 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:13:15 ◼   ► - Marco, why don't you save me

00:13:16 ◼   ► and tell me about something that's awesome.

00:13:18 ◼   ► - Well, we're back to Jon,

00:13:19 ◼   ► because our first sponsor this week

00:13:20 ◼   ► is Cards Against Humanity, and rather than doing a sponsor read, they asked Jon to review

00:13:25 ◼   ► another toaster oven.

00:13:27 ◼   ► [Toster Oven Theme]

00:13:37 ◼   ► So Jon, what is this week's toaster oven?

00:13:40 ◼   ► This toaster oven is, this week's toaster is something. This is the... I think nostalgia

00:13:46 ◼   ► is actually the name brand, but anyway, it's the Nostalgia Electrics BSET 300, the retro red

00:13:53 ◼   ► variant. Three-in-one breakfast station. Before I continue with this, I'm going to put the link

00:13:58 ◼   ► in the show notes or in the chat room. You two should look at it so I don't have to try to paint

00:14:03 ◼   ► you a word picture of this monstrosity. Holy mother. All right. Oh my. Oh my God. What is that?

00:14:10 ◼   ► Amazing. All right. Hold on. Yeah, if you are, if you're listening to this and you are not driving

00:14:16 ◼   ► or not in a situation where you will put people in danger by taking a moment to look at this picture,

00:14:21 ◼   ► then please take a moment to look at this picture because this is amazing.

00:14:24 ◼   ► Oh my god.

00:14:25 ◼   ► So it's like, it's like a toaster oven and it's red. I like the idea of these things being

00:14:31 ◼   ► interesting colors because they're boring when they're gray or black. So this one is a nice

00:14:34 ◼   ► kind of fire engine red. The toaster oven part of this thing is actually pretty small. They show two

00:14:40 ◼   ► slices of bread in it that's kind of optimistic again miniature bread for the pictures but that's

00:14:44 ◼   ► not all there is to this thing because the toaster oven part is in like the right side of the thing

00:14:52 ◼   ► above the toaster oven is a non-stick griddle or what they call a non-stick griddle i'll get to

00:14:58 ◼   ► that in a little bit uh in the picture they show eggs cooking on it and sausage cooking on it

00:15:03 ◼   ► to the left of the toaster oven again this is all one unit these are not three separate things it's

00:15:07 ◼   ► It's just like a Steve Jobs iPhone

00:15:09 ◼   ► Is a coffee maker like a filter drip coffee maker with a little coffee thing ahead

00:15:17 ◼   ► So in the same appliance, yes, the idea is that in this one thing you can toast your bread make your coffee

00:15:23 ◼   ► Cook your eggs and your sausages. That's why it is a three-in-one breakfast station

00:15:27 ◼   ► The first thing to point out about this is when you look at the picture

00:15:33 ◼   ► You it looks crazy, but there's I know they put things in the picture like the miniature bread and the eggs and the sausage

00:15:40 ◼   ► But there's really no sense of scale here

00:15:42 ◼   ► If you think that coffee that drip coffee mug

00:15:45 ◼   ► It looks like you know a typical like you know 80s kind of office drip coffee thing before everyone had the K cups and everything

00:15:50 ◼   ► It is not a full-size thing. It's like a doll's

00:15:53 ◼   ► Coffee thing that that container holds maybe like a cup and a half two cups of hot water or coffee in it

00:16:02 ◼   ► It is not a full-size thing so it's very and I guess this is good because if it was a full-size coffee maker the thing

00:16:07 ◼   ► Would be huge right and same thing with the griddle all very small so it's strange

00:16:11 ◼   ► And it's like maybe if you live alone

00:16:13 ◼   ► And you just want to make yourself coffee and you want to make yourself drip coffee with like little filters and everything

00:16:19 ◼   ► That's what you can do with this thing here so the controls

00:16:22 ◼   ► It's got if with all this functionality. This is the one toaster that said you know what we don't need three knobs two knobs

00:16:26 ◼   ► It's funny

00:16:28 ◼   ► Switch on the bottom and the switch on the bottom

00:16:30 ◼   ► It's like a toggle switch and that just turns the coffee thing on or off

00:16:34 ◼   ► It's like basically do you want me to heat up the heating element that heats the water for the coffee or do you not?

00:16:38 ◼   ► So that's independent

00:16:40 ◼   ► The top dial is a thing that lets you turn on and off the elements

00:16:44 ◼   ► The thing's got four guarded elements two on the bottom two on the top

00:16:47 ◼   ► You can say only bottom only top or top and bottom or off

00:16:51 ◼   ► Those are your settings there and then the the second knob is temperature

00:16:56 ◼   ► And the temperature knob is fairly hilarious if you can zoom in on the Amazon thing you can see that

00:17:01 ◼   ► The light medium and dark settings for toast are

00:17:04 ◼   ► Within like three degrees of each other on the dial like the whole rest of my dial is for all this stuff

00:17:09 ◼   ► But like and this is not an accurate dial like if this was a surgical instrument

00:17:13 ◼   ► Maybe you could say am I between medium and dark?

00:17:16 ◼   ► There's so much slop on the dial like the three dots are within the margin of error of

00:17:20 ◼   ► Like the slop on the dial

00:17:22 ◼   ► alright

00:17:24 ◼   ► But here's the biggest problem with this device and I actually I don't drink coffee so I just made hot water

00:17:28 ◼   ► Well, what am I gonna do I don't want I'm dirty up with the filters and everything but

00:17:34 ◼   ► the idea behind this seems to be that

00:17:38 ◼   ► rather than you know for space savings and

00:17:41 ◼   ► To have like all your stuff happening in one spot if you have it like a small kitchen or you just want to do like

00:17:45 ◼   ► Why waste all this space, you know, you can do this thing, right?

00:17:47 ◼   ► There's a lot of problems that theory first is

00:17:50 ◼   ► There's not a lot of room on top of a toaster depending how low your cabinets are the distance from the top of this toaster to

00:17:54 ◼   ► The bottom of your cabinets may not be that big and you really don't want anything that's gonna put off steam or like

00:18:00 ◼   ► Spatter from from sausages or it really just like there's a reason they have vents on top of your cooking services

00:18:07 ◼   ► You don't want there to be like a an 8-inch or a 1-foot gap between your cooking sausages in the bottom of your counters

00:18:13 ◼   ► who's gonna coat them with grease, but it turns out that's not that big of a problem because

00:18:17 ◼   ► The way this thing's works is like there's no separate control

00:18:21 ◼   ► You just pick like which elements do you want to turn on?

00:18:23 ◼   ► So if you want all the elements on the top and the bottom ones and you turn the dial turn it on

00:18:27 ◼   ► Those four heat elements that's it except for the coffee thing and they have to fulfill the job of toasting the bread and also

00:18:35 ◼   ► Heating the griddle on top. They're not up to that task Wow, you blow a fuse. No, they didn't blow a fuse

00:18:41 ◼   ► They're just not up to the task

00:18:42 ◼   ► Basically my bread that I put in to get toast out came out as baked bread because it's just too

00:18:48 ◼   ► slow and it just slowly heats and dries and heats and dries the bread and eventually kind of sort of browns it and by the time

00:18:54 ◼   ► You get them out there like little bricks

00:18:56 ◼   ► Like it's not it's not a good toaster takes a really long time and they don't they don't toast you want them to be toasted

00:19:02 ◼   ► And crispy on the outside but not like totally dehydrated, right?

00:19:05 ◼   ► And the second problem is the only things that are heating the griddle part are the top two elements and they're not enough

00:19:11 ◼   ► They just you know, the instruction guys like oh you should preheat it for five minutes, right?

00:19:15 ◼   ► I don't want to preheat if I'm doing that I'm losing the whole convenience thing

00:19:17 ◼   ► So I cooked an egg on top of this thing and it was the worst like it just did not get hot enough to really

00:19:22 ◼   ► cook the egg and by the way the surface on top of this is like

00:19:25 ◼   ► Pillowed like a pillowed quilt, you know like a bunch of little rounded rectangle lumps all over it

00:19:30 ◼   ► I don't understand what the pillowing is there for all it does is make it more likely that your egg is gonna stick because it

00:19:34 ◼   ► Has more sort of nooks and crannies to go into maybe it's for the grease from your sausages to drain out or something

00:19:40 ◼   ► Anyway, terrible for cooking eggs. Just does not get hot enough fast enough. Doesn't get hot enough period.

00:19:45 ◼   ► And I don't see any extra convenience. And the coffee maker thing is totally disconnected from the toaster and the griddle.

00:19:51 ◼   ► It might as well be separate because it's just like, well, this is a very small low-capacity thing that heats hot water for drip coffee.

00:19:56 ◼   ► So just like the thing that was a slot toaster in the toaster oven, this multi-function device does none of its functions well.

00:20:05 ◼   ► Maybe I'm gonna say maybe it does the coffee thing well, maybe it is a sink good single serving drip coffee thing

00:20:09 ◼   ► But I really doubt it

00:20:11 ◼   ► All I can say is that it does boil the water in a reasonably timely fashion because hey

00:20:14 ◼   ► It's only boiling like one cup of water probably isn't boiling good and it did well

00:20:18 ◼   ► Yeah, probably not and it did it didn't blow a circuit or anything, but it really should have because if you

00:20:23 ◼   ► It just was not getting hot enough the top of if you're wondering how the hell you wash this thing the griddle top thing comes

00:20:30 ◼   ► Right off which seems weird to me because if you take it off and turn the toaster and you've got hot heating elements on it

00:20:34 ◼   ► opens the air. Anyway, it comes off and you can clean it easily. That's about the only

00:20:38 ◼   ► good thing I can say about this. The door, the other thing I say about it is that it's

00:20:42 ◼   ► cute. Like this is a cute nostalgia thing, the fact that it's red and it looks kind of

00:20:46 ◼   ► like, I don't know, I thought it was this was a cute appliance. So it would look good

00:20:49 ◼   ► in the background of a movie or sitcom, but don't actually use it to heat up any of your

00:20:54 ◼   ► food to make it better to eat. I cannot recommend.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Even at its bargain price for three different appliances, the combination of only $70 doesn't

00:21:04 ◼   ► seem that ridiculous.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Well, it's just that I wouldn't spend $70 on this because you don't, you can get a good

00:21:10 ◼   ► toaster for less money than that.

00:21:12 ◼   ► This is not a good toaster.

00:21:13 ◼   ► It's not good at anything.

00:21:14 ◼   ► So I don't, I don't, if I had this in my house, I don't know what I would use it for.

00:21:17 ◼   ► I would use it for nothing.

00:21:19 ◼   ► If I paid you $70 to keep it on your counter, would you?

00:21:22 ◼   ► No, I don't have that kind of counter space.

00:21:24 ◼   ► Oh, I forgot to mention, there's also a lid that goes on the griddle thing on the top.

00:21:30 ◼   ► And I only can only assume that's like, look, we know this thing doesn't get hot enough,

00:21:33 ◼   ► But if you put the lid on it will steam your eggs at least and they'll actually kind of

00:21:36 ◼   ► cook.

00:21:37 ◼   ► Awesome.

00:21:38 ◼   ► So, my final question on this is that this is from this brand called Nostalgia Electronics

00:21:46 ◼   ► and they appear to have a whole different line of things but was this kind of thing

00:21:51 ◼   ► ever a thing that people use?

00:21:53 ◼   ► Like it kind of implies that this is an old appliance that they're bringing back, hence

00:21:58 ◼   ► nostalgia.

00:21:59 ◼   ► But was this kind of appliance ever really used by anybody ever?

00:22:02 ◼   ► I think I assumed the the nostalgia brand is only loosely connected with the theme of actual nostalgia

00:22:09 ◼   ► And I would be guessing based on the appearance that just the idea is

00:22:12 ◼   ► Make it look like appliances look to them. Not that there was a specific appliance like this

00:22:17 ◼   ► And it does like with the script lettering and the the red metal and everything

00:22:21 ◼   ► It does look like a little bit of a throwback

00:22:23 ◼   ► But it's big plastic thing on top of the coffee maker that doesn't quite look right, but it does kind of fit in with the

00:22:28 ◼   ► sort of 50s 60s

00:22:31 ◼   ► Sci-fi like the kitchen of the future automation and you know

00:22:34 ◼   ► It does fit in even if they never made one of these things it totally fits with that theme

00:22:38 ◼   ► Especially with the the fact that it doesn't work with a damn just like every one of the kitchen of the future things

00:22:44 ◼   ► They made up in the 50s and 60s

00:22:46 ◼   ► They should have just called it sad electrics because I think like there is no way to use this and not be sad somehow

00:22:53 ◼   ► either either just you're using it because

00:22:56 ◼   ► your life situation somehow led you to buy and own one of these things or

00:23:01 ◼   ► You are sad because its performance is so bad that you are sitting there eating your baked bread and undercooked sausage

00:23:08 ◼   ► And just makes you sad people in the chat room are posting the positive and negative Amazon reviews

00:23:12 ◼   ► I can't believe there are positive ones. They must be like

00:23:15 ◼   ► Manufacture, I just cannot believe anyone would find any part of the satisfactory except like I said, maybe I

00:23:21 ◼   ► I wanted a drip coffee maker that only made enough coffee for one and a half people and finally I found one.

00:23:26 ◼   ► Yeah, you know a Keurig isn't sufficient. They really want that drip coffee.

00:23:29 ◼   ► Yikes. Well, I did not know what toaster this was gonna be before the show started and I am glad I didn't because that is magnificent.

00:23:39 ◼   ► Oh, yeah, and before we wrap up the toaster things, two things in this. One,

00:23:43 ◼   ► I finally, people have been asking me and have been asking for this entire run of ads,

00:23:48 ◼   ► What do I do with all the old toasters old toasters and my answer for a long time had been nothing

00:23:53 ◼   ► We don't have any plans to do anything with the old toasters

00:23:56 ◼   ► Eventually got to the point where I had just too many gigantic toaster boxes of mass

00:24:00 ◼   ► I needed them to go away. And so now the toasters have gone away

00:24:03 ◼   ► I don't know where they went but a nice person came to my house and took

00:24:07 ◼   ► ten toasters

00:24:09 ◼   ► Jammed into a giant truck and took them away from my house. So they're gone

00:24:13 ◼   ► I no longer have them when I was taking these ten toasters and sending them away

00:24:17 ◼   ► way, I found this box unopened. I hadn't realized that it had an extra unopened box. This is

00:24:23 ◼   ► like finding the strange treasure, like, "Wait a second, this one's still sealed up. Did

00:24:28 ◼   ► I never open this one?" And I opened it, and this is the unholy thing that came out. So

00:24:31 ◼   ► I don't even know when I got this toaster. Maybe it got filed away with the rest of the

00:24:36 ◼   ► toasters, like the Ark of the Covenant at the end of Indiana Jones and Temple of Doom.

00:24:39 ◼   ► Jesus. At the end of Raiders of the Lost Ark, which does not have an Indiana Jones prefix.

00:24:42 ◼   ► See what you've done to me, Steam's, before?

00:24:44 ◼   ► Now by any chance, did you have a coffee maker box near them?

00:24:48 ◼   ► I'm thinking maybe there was some hanky panky going on and this came out.

00:24:51 ◼   ► Wow.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:24:52 ◼   ► Anyway, so this is the second to last toaster of this run.

00:24:55 ◼   ► We've got one more left this year, I think.

00:24:57 ◼   ► So, and I'll have to get rid of these toasters anyway.

00:25:00 ◼   ► So that's where they go.

00:25:01 ◼   ► They go away from my house so I can fit my car in the driveway.

00:25:04 ◼   ► [Music]

00:25:11 ◼   ► [Music]

00:25:15 ◼   ► I don't even know where to go from here.

00:25:17 ◼   ► Well, thanks to Cards Against Humanity for sponsoring our show once again.

00:25:22 ◼   ► Wow. Should we just end here? I mean, we have other things to talk about. We have other sponsors, but where do we go?

00:25:27 ◼   ► I mean, it's all going to go downhill from here. How do we top that?

00:25:30 ◼   ► What can we really do?

00:25:31 ◼   ► Oh my goodness.

00:25:33 ◼   ► All right, so we do have things to talk about.

00:25:36 ◼   ► And most specifically, we have some Apple TV things to talk about.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And I don't know how much I can contribute to this because I'm holding strong and not

00:25:43 ◼   ► buying the Apple TV that I'm sure I'm going to buy sometime between now and Christmas.

00:25:47 ◼   ► You didn't even order it?

00:25:48 ◼   ► I thought you would find out you would have surely ordered it at least.

00:25:50 ◼   ► No, I think I'm going to try to hold out for a Christmas/Hanukkah gift, but we'll see how

00:25:54 ◼   ► it goes.

00:25:55 ◼   ► And the Plex app is out, right?

00:25:56 ◼   ► Yes.

00:25:57 ◼   ► out, which is why I am not really holding too strong on this. And I've heard it's really

00:26:03 ◼   ► good, which is not helping me.

00:26:05 ◼   ► - Keep in mind also that the way Apple's product release cycle and pricing works is that you're

00:26:12 ◼   ► not gaining anything by waiting. If you're gonna buy this model of Apple TV ever, you

00:26:17 ◼   ► should buy it now.

00:26:18 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're right. But I mean, I don't know, I figured, like I said, it's holiday

00:26:22 ◼   ► time coming up, and this is the sort of thing that I do kind of want, but I really don't

00:26:26 ◼   ► feel like spending money on, in part because I really don't want to mess with my audio

00:26:30 ◼   ► setup that we went through last week, and yes, there are options like the little kooky

00:26:34 ◼   ► box that we found last week, but I don't want to mess with my setup.

00:26:38 ◼   ► A lot of people, maybe this is completely reasonable, and I'm a weirdo, but a lot of

00:26:42 ◼   ► people wrote to me via Twitter and were like, "Dude, just leave your old Apple TV exactly

00:26:45 ◼   ► where it is."

00:26:46 ◼   ► I'm like, "Well, I don't have to do that, man."

00:26:49 ◼   ► Like I—

00:26:50 ◼   ► Then just say the thing where you can use your old Apple TV as an AirPlay speaker for

00:26:54 ◼   ► your new one.

00:26:55 ◼   ► That's exactly what they're saying.

00:26:56 ◼   ► like, "Why? That seems so crazy to me that that's the best course of action, is to leave this old

00:27:02 ◼   ► Apple TV that I really will almost never use anymore. Leave that plugged in because that's

00:27:07 ◼   ► the best scenario." I'm not saying it's unreasonable for Apple to take away my optical connection,

00:27:13 ◼   ► which is the thing that I'm all upset about. They probably did the right thing here. It's probably

00:27:18 ◼   ► silly to leave that optical connection on the new Apple TV, and that's why they pulled it.

00:27:22 ◼   ► So I'm not, I hope I don't sound like one of those people that's like,

00:27:25 ◼   ► "Oh, well they changed that one thing I needed and they're wrong!"

00:27:28 ◼   ► No, they're not wrong. They're right. I'm the one that's crazy.

00:27:31 ◼   ► But I'm crazy and I like having my optical connections.

00:27:33 ◼   ► So, in any case, I'm sure I will get an Apple TV. I'm sure it will be in 2015.

00:27:37 ◼   ► And we'll see if I end up paying for it myself or just getting it as a gift.

00:27:41 ◼   ► Ah, you gotta stand strong with the Sony Philips digital interface.

00:27:44 ◼   ► Exactly. Is that what SPDIF?

00:27:47 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:27:48 ◼   ► Yeah. I didn't know that's what it stood for.

00:27:49 ◼   ► You ever see it written "S/PDIF"?

00:27:51 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah. It's Sony/Philips Digital Interface.

00:27:55 ◼   ► I did not know that was the acronym there.

00:27:58 ◼   ► Yeah, because Sony and Phillips, they work together on all sorts, like the CD and all

00:28:01 ◼   ► sorts of like digital audio stuff, and so they standardized this thing forever ago.

00:28:04 ◼   ► It's really old. And yeah, so Sony/Philips Digital Interface.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Today I learned. Anyway, so what do we have to talk about with this, or what do you guys

00:28:13 ◼   ► have to talk about with this?

00:28:15 ◼   ► I got my Apple TV today, actually. So I unpacked it and set it up in a bit of a hurry before

00:28:20 ◼   ► the show. But, and I also had seen it in the Apple store before that, so I actually have

00:28:23 ◼   ► some real world experience with this thing. And I have to say, after reading everybody's

00:28:27 ◼   ► stories and listening to what they had to say about the Apple TV, specifically the setup

00:28:32 ◼   ► experience, I was prepared for the worst. Like, I was prepared for like, Wii to Wii

00:28:36 ◼   ► U migration level of nightmare setup. So one of the things this thing does, I don't know

00:28:42 ◼   ► if the old one did it as well, I don't remember, is when you take it out of the box and plug

00:28:45 ◼   ► it in, it wants you to bring your iPhone near it and make sure Bluetooth is on on your iPhone

00:28:51 ◼   ► and just hold it near the thing and it will sort of figure out what Wi-Fi network your

00:28:55 ◼   ► phone is on and connect to the same Wi-Fi network and use the same password and all

00:28:59 ◼   ► that other stuff so the Apple TV can get on the same network.

00:29:03 ◼   ► And that part worked for me.

00:29:04 ◼   ► I plugged the Apple TV in, I brought my phone over to it, I unlocked my phone, waited a

00:29:09 ◼   ► couple seconds, tapped a little dialog box on the phone and it found my network, which

00:29:13 ◼   ► doesn't really matter because I hadn't plugged into ethernet anyway so it seemed like kind

00:29:16 ◼   ► of a waste but anyway that part worked and then I at some point I signed in with my Apple

00:29:23 ◼   ► ID password and I had to use the terrible keyboard that everybody hates which is not

00:29:27 ◼   ► so much a keyboard as a key line because it's got A through Z in a single horizontal strip

00:29:36 ◼   ► and there's another row of punctuation another row with switch to capital or lowercase and

00:29:39 ◼   ► by the way if you hold down the button on their mode you can get capital letters without

00:29:42 ◼   ► having to switch from capital to lowercase.

00:29:45 ◼   ► That is very painful to use.

00:29:46 ◼   ► I'm not entirely sure, but it's more painful than the old way where you had to hit, like,

00:29:50 ◼   ► because you have a swipey pad, you can swipe quickly from left to the right and skip multiple

00:29:54 ◼   ► letters.

00:29:55 ◼   ► Instead of having to go A, B, C, D, E, F, like you can go swipe once and go all the

00:29:59 ◼   ► way up to like J or R or whatever.

00:30:02 ◼   ► So I don't, I think the touch pad is useful for that.

00:30:05 ◼   ► I don't understand why they made it a strip.

00:30:07 ◼   ► It's not like there's not enough room on a screen.

00:30:08 ◼   ► They got the whole rest of the screen there.

00:30:10 ◼   ► Maybe with the rest of the UI and apps it was better that way.

00:30:12 ◼   ► Anyway, because I only had to enter my Apple ID, well I had to enter it a couple of times,

00:30:17 ◼   ► but not an obscene number of times.

00:30:19 ◼   ► It didn't seem that ridiculous to me.

00:30:22 ◼   ► So I entered my Apple ID, I went to Netflix, I had to sign in with my Netflix ID.

00:30:26 ◼   ► It's kind of a shame that it couldn't get all this information from the previous Apple

00:30:28 ◼   ► ID or from iCloud Keychain or from any other place that in the Apple ecosystem that it

00:30:32 ◼   ► supposedly has secure storage of username and password.

00:30:34 ◼   ► This seems like is the main thing people were complaining about.

00:30:36 ◼   ► I got asked about their passwords too often.

00:30:39 ◼   ► The passwords are hard to enter.

00:30:40 ◼   ► And if you haven't read these articles,

00:30:42 ◼   ► you may be wondering,

00:30:43 ◼   ► "Why don't they just use the iOS remote app?"

00:30:45 ◼   ► That doesn't work.

00:30:46 ◼   ► The iOS remote app does not work with the new Apple TV.

00:30:48 ◼   ► Does it not work yet?

00:30:49 ◼   ► Are they gonna make it work?

00:30:50 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:30:51 ◼   ► It doesn't work now.

00:30:52 ◼   ► So it doesn't help you

00:30:53 ◼   ► if you're setting up your Apple TV now.

00:30:55 ◼   ► And that's a legit complaint.

00:30:56 ◼   ► It's a regression from the old version of the product.

00:31:00 ◼   ► It's a pain to use any kind of onscreen keyboard.

00:31:03 ◼   ► and the onscreen keyboard they have seems pretty stupid.

00:31:07 ◼   ► I find with the little swipey remote,

00:31:09 ◼   ► it's hard for me to swipe up and down.

00:31:11 ◼   ► I don't know why it's not registering.

00:31:13 ◼   ► It just, it takes it as if I'm going across,

00:31:14 ◼   ► like when I want to swipe down to the next row of things

00:31:16 ◼   ► or something for the punctuation, it just doesn't, you know,

00:31:19 ◼   ► it feels like it's stuck a lot.

00:31:21 ◼   ► You can also, by the way, if you have the new Apple TV,

00:31:24 ◼   ► you can tap on it like it's a D pad,

00:31:26 ◼   ► not press it all the way down so it physically clicks,

00:31:28 ◼   ► but just tap, like touch the surface

00:31:30 ◼   ► as if it's a virtual D pad.

00:31:32 ◼   ► and that works as well in most places in the Apple TV.

00:31:35 ◼   ► There's a little bit of a learning curve,

00:31:36 ◼   ► I feel like, with the Apple TV.

00:31:37 ◼   ► I spent a while with the remote

00:31:38 ◼   ► and tried to discover all the possible combinations

00:31:41 ◼   ► where you click on the left side of the remote

00:31:44 ◼   ► and click on the right side,

00:31:45 ◼   ► tap on the left, tap on the right,

00:31:46 ◼   ► swipe up, swipe down, swipe from the top,

00:31:48 ◼   ► swipe from the bottom.

00:31:49 ◼   ► A surprising number of interesting inputs,

00:31:52 ◼   ► all hampered by the fact that remote is really too small

00:31:55 ◼   ► and awkwardly shaped

00:31:56 ◼   ► and not the best thing in the world to hold onto.

00:31:59 ◼   ► All this is to say that my setup experience wasn't that bad

00:32:02 ◼   ► And I was mostly pleasantly surprised by the variety of ways

00:32:06 ◼   ► that you can interface with this thing, the speed it felt faster

00:32:10 ◼   ► to me to navigate around than my old Apple TV.

00:32:12 ◼   ► That could just be because it didn't have to use IR,

00:32:14 ◼   ► and Bluetooth has less latency than that.

00:32:16 ◼   ► It could just be because it's a much faster CPU or whatever.

00:32:19 ◼   ► But it felt pretty good to me.

00:32:21 ◼   ► Maybe I was primed to--

00:32:24 ◼   ► with all the bad reviews, I was expecting the worst.

00:32:26 ◼   ► But I got to say, I would much rather

00:32:28 ◼   ► have this than my previous Apple TV any day of the week?

00:32:32 ◼   ► - Well, that's a much more positive review

00:32:34 ◼   ► than a lot of what I've heard.

00:32:36 ◼   ► I haven't read any to my recollection,

00:32:38 ◼   ► but I listened to this week's talk show

00:32:41 ◼   ► with Jon and Guy English, and they seemed like,

00:32:45 ◼   ► eh, it's good, but it's got a lot of problems.

00:32:48 ◼   ► This week's upgrade with Jason Snell

00:32:52 ◼   ► and Mike Hurley and Joe Steele,

00:32:55 ◼   ► They were in various levels of frustrated to furious, I'd say.

00:33:00 ◼   ► And I don't know, just looking at it

00:33:03 ◼   ► from an outsider's point of view,

00:33:05 ◼   ► in the sense that I don't have one,

00:33:07 ◼   ► I haven't done hours of research

00:33:09 ◼   ► into the specifics of what it offers,

00:33:10 ◼   ► because really the only thing I care about

00:33:12 ◼   ► for the most part is Plex.

00:33:13 ◼   ► I just feel like I saw an inordinate amount

00:33:18 ◼   ► of grumbling on Twitter.

00:33:19 ◼   ► And it seemed like everyone,

00:33:22 ◼   ► everyone was really, really grumbly about it.

00:33:24 ◼   ► And maybe that's my own biases that are surfacing, and maybe it's not that bad.

00:33:29 ◼   ► But you know, Jesse Charr earlier today was saying that it's really a great device and

00:33:33 ◼   ► everyone's just being a bunch of curmudgeons, and that very well could be.

00:33:37 ◼   ► But I don't know, from the outside, it seemed like with the watch release, everyone was

00:33:41 ◼   ► like, "Hey, this is cool.

00:33:42 ◼   ► You know, it's got some issues, but it's cool."

00:33:43 ◼   ► And with this, it seemed like, "Oh, man, this is nothing but issues," to almost everyone.

00:33:48 ◼   ► Well, I wouldn't say that.

00:33:49 ◼   ► I mean, this is different.

00:33:52 ◼   ► So we've all, many of us, people who have been fans of the Apple TV so far, we've been

00:33:57 ◼   ► using the Apple TV for years and it's been pretty much the same.

00:34:02 ◼   ► Most of it has not really changed much, at least since the introduction of the second

00:34:05 ◼   ► gen one and a lot of it even from before that.

00:34:08 ◼   ► It's been really the solid thing and for me, the Apple TV is by far the most common device

00:34:16 ◼   ► that we use for the TV.

00:34:18 ◼   ► It is our TV, you know, because we don't have cable

00:34:21 ◼   ► or cable cutters or those annoying people.

00:34:23 ◼   ► We don't, like, the Apple TV is our everything.

00:34:25 ◼   ► Like, I have an Amazon Fire TV on the front TV

00:34:29 ◼   ► and I have a Roku on the back TV

00:34:30 ◼   ► and we never actually switch to those

00:34:33 ◼   ► for almost any purpose, except the Amazon one

00:34:35 ◼   ► we'll switch to to use Plex so far,

00:34:37 ◼   ► although now we won't need to do that anymore.

00:34:39 ◼   ► But the fact is it's different.

00:34:40 ◼   ► You know, the remote, I think, has some issues.

00:34:43 ◼   ► It is unquestionably more capable in general.

00:34:47 ◼   ► it can do more things.

00:34:49 ◼   ► And some of the big ones obviously are Siri

00:34:51 ◼   ► and the volume control.

00:34:52 ◼   ► But it also, you know, it has accelerometers,

00:34:55 ◼   ► it has the touch pad, which can be, you know,

00:34:57 ◼   ► more different levels of input and more different kinds

00:35:01 ◼   ► or directions of input than just a regular D-pad could be.

00:35:05 ◼   ► But I do feel like, in my opinion,

00:35:07 ◼   ► it is a step back from a D-pad in general usability

00:35:12 ◼   ► of the things we've used the TV for so far.

00:35:16 ◼   ► So who knows where the apps and stuff will go in the future?

00:35:20 ◼   ► We don't really know that yet, time will tell,

00:35:22 ◼   ► whether apps really take advantage of it being a touchpad

00:35:24 ◼   ► and not just a directional control.

00:35:26 ◼   ► But today, using the Apple TV

00:35:29 ◼   ► the way you've always used it before,

00:35:31 ◼   ► it feels very imprecise.

00:35:33 ◼   ► And one of the problems with the key line, text input,

00:35:37 ◼   ► is when you're typing these on this keyboard,

00:35:41 ◼   ► there's a high cost to mistyping anything,

00:35:44 ◼   ► because you have to like, you know,

00:35:45 ◼   ► then go find the delete key or if you hold it down,

00:35:48 ◼   ► there's one on the hold down menu,

00:35:49 ◼   ► but it's kind of hard to do,

00:35:51 ◼   ► especially if you're new to the control.

00:35:53 ◼   ► So you need to be very precise on that keyboard

00:35:55 ◼   ► because the cost of making an error is annoying.

00:36:00 ◼   ► But that's the first thing you really need to do

00:36:03 ◼   ► when setting this up is type in your password a few times,

00:36:06 ◼   ► and that is the time when you have the least experience

00:36:08 ◼   ► with the new remote.

00:36:09 ◼   ► So your very first interaction with this thing

00:36:12 ◼   ► is set up to make you basically hate the remote

00:36:15 ◼   ► and hate inputting text into it.

00:36:16 ◼   ► And who knows what they could have done to fix that.

00:36:19 ◼   ► I think obviously better integration with an iPhone

00:36:22 ◼   ► to let you use the iPhone keyboard

00:36:24 ◼   ► like the old remote app did would have been nice.

00:36:27 ◼   ► I hope they do something like that in the future.

00:36:29 ◼   ► It's not there now and that is unfortunate.

00:36:31 ◼   ► But for me so far, when you pick up the remote,

00:36:36 ◼   ► let's say the remote falls on the couch, you pick it up.

00:36:38 ◼   ► It is incredibly hard to pick it up

00:36:41 ◼   ► without accidentally seeking the video that you're in.

00:36:44 ◼   ► Because you pick it up and if your finger brushes

00:36:47 ◼   ► that touch pad area at all,

00:36:49 ◼   ► you seek the video that you're watching.

00:36:51 ◼   ► And so there's little issues like that

00:36:53 ◼   ► of accidental input, there's issues with the key line

00:36:57 ◼   ► and navigation of just imprecision because it's a touch pad.

00:37:00 ◼   ► Honestly, if they made this remote

00:37:03 ◼   ► with a regular up, down, left, right, D-pad kind of buttons

00:37:07 ◼   ► like the old one as an option in that top area

00:37:09 ◼   ► instead of the touch pad, I would choose that option,

00:37:12 ◼   ► no question.

00:37:13 ◼   ► And maybe, again, maybe in the future,

00:37:15 ◼   ► if apps start really needing the touch pad

00:37:16 ◼   ► and taking good advantage of it, that might change.

00:37:18 ◼   ► But right now, I think everything with the new remote

00:37:22 ◼   ► that you think of as things you do on an Apple TV,

00:37:25 ◼   ► things like navigating, things like Netflix and iTunes

00:37:28 ◼   ► and everything, those kind of things, in my opinion,

00:37:30 ◼   ► are made worse by the touch pad, not better.

00:37:33 ◼   ► - Have you tried to use your old Apple TV remotes

00:37:36 ◼   ► with the new Apple TV?

00:37:38 ◼   ► because my understanding is it does have an IR receiver

00:37:40 ◼   ► and that does work.

00:37:41 ◼   ► - Yeah, you can, yeah.

00:37:42 ◼   ► And which is nice, 'cause we have a universal

00:37:44 ◼   ► Logitech Harmony thing, and so that can control it also,

00:37:47 ◼   ► 'cause it'll accept the old kind of input

00:37:50 ◼   ► from all the older modes.

00:37:51 ◼   ► So that's nice.

00:37:51 ◼   ► But then you don't have things like Siri.

00:37:54 ◼   ► So you kinda miss out on some of the new features.

00:37:56 ◼   ► So again, time will tell how this all shakes out.

00:37:59 ◼   ► Chances are, we're probably all gonna get used to it,

00:38:02 ◼   ► and it'll probably blow over.

00:38:03 ◼   ► But I don't think that takes away from

00:38:06 ◼   ► that there are downsides.

00:38:08 ◼   ► It's very similar in so many ways,

00:38:10 ◼   ► very similar to the Force Touch trackpad,

00:38:12 ◼   ► which I finally got to try the full size one yesterday

00:38:15 ◼   ► in the Apple store.

00:38:16 ◼   ► And it actually was not as bad as I expected

00:38:17 ◼   ► and neither was the keyboard.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I actually like the keyboard better than the trackpad.

00:38:21 ◼   ► And if that's the future keyboard of Apple laptops,

00:38:23 ◼   ► which I assume it will be, then that's not that bad.

00:38:26 ◼   ► And the trackpad though, like all the Force Touch stuff,

00:38:28 ◼   ► it's always like almost good enough,

00:38:31 ◼   ► but in my opinion, as I've said many times before,

00:38:33 ◼   ► it's not quite there.

00:38:34 ◼   ► So it is kind of a step backwards in reliability

00:38:37 ◼   ► and precision and I think the touch feel sucks

00:38:39 ◼   ► on the Force Touch trackpad and the full size one,

00:38:41 ◼   ► no different, I tried all the different settings

00:38:42 ◼   ► in the Apple store, it feels, in my opinion,

00:38:45 ◼   ► the click feels awful on it, even worse than laptops,

00:38:47 ◼   ► I think, it's a terrible feeling click.

00:38:50 ◼   ► But they've made this thing thinner, more advanced,

00:38:53 ◼   ► more complicated and they've achieved something

00:38:55 ◼   ► that is almost as good as the old one.

00:38:57 ◼   ► I think that's probably what's going to happen

00:38:59 ◼   ► with the touchpad remote is that they've added

00:39:02 ◼   ► all these capabilities by making it a touchpad,

00:39:05 ◼   ► even though it isn't Force Touch,

00:39:06 ◼   ► I don't want to compute those two, but they've added all these capabilities by making it,

00:39:10 ◼   ► you know, a touchpad instead of just up, down, left, right buttons. But the basics of like

00:39:16 ◼   ► you're operating this thing imprecisely, often in the dark, often without looking at it,

00:39:22 ◼   ► it's less reliable. And that I think is always going to have a baseline level of slight frustration

00:39:28 ◼   ► for a lot of people and more frustration for geeks like me who are very picky about such

00:39:33 ◼   ► things, even though it will offer us more capabilities.

00:39:36 ◼   ► On the previous shows, I complained about all the things that are still wrong with this

00:39:39 ◼   ► remote before I had laid eyes on it or before I had touched it.

00:39:42 ◼   ► That's all still true.

00:39:43 ◼   ► It shouldn't be shaped the way it is.

00:39:44 ◼   ► It's way too small.

00:39:46 ◼   ► It's not made for it to be easy to grip.

00:39:48 ◼   ► Marco talked about accidentally touching the touchpad.

00:39:52 ◼   ► It's symmetrical, more or less.

00:39:54 ◼   ► It's symmetrical, you know, but the buttons are kind of in the middle, so you can't even

00:39:58 ◼   ► feel your way to which way is the right way to pick it up.

00:40:01 ◼   ► If you try to feel which side is right by perhaps feeling the different texture of the touchpad and the other thing

00:40:06 ◼   ► If you happen to feel around and it's a touchpad side. Yeah, you're gonna move the video all that stuff is stupid

00:40:11 ◼   ► It shouldn't be shaped like this. It should be bigger

00:40:12 ◼   ► It should be something that acknowledges that people are going to grab it with their hands

00:40:16 ◼   ► The buttons should be different sizes and shapes and textures and positions and all that is true

00:40:21 ◼   ► But specifically on the issue of of the touchpad versus the d-pad thing

00:40:25 ◼   ► Like I said, I have trouble

00:40:27 ◼   ► I don't understand why this is maybe it's just because of the way i'm moving my thumb

00:40:30 ◼   ► I have trouble doing up down left and right I can mostly get it to do it every time but up down

00:40:33 ◼   ► I have a little bit trouble

00:40:34 ◼   ► But here's the here's the reason I think it's better than a d-pad are better than the previous Apple remote

00:40:39 ◼   ► Let's say first thing the previous Apple remote did not have a d-pad in the Nintendo sense

00:40:43 ◼   ► It had a circle and I hated that damn circle because I could never feel my way

00:40:48 ◼   ► Towards what was exactly up and left and down right and yeah, so you're like well you're feeling the edges of the remotes

00:40:52 ◼   ► Don't you know that left is perpendicular to the left edge and right is you know like?

00:40:57 ◼   ► Very often it just didn't feel secure to me as an actual d-pad. The actual d-pad that's a cross shaped piece of plastic

00:41:03 ◼   ► You can feel where the left where the right as long as you make the d-pad big enough

00:41:06 ◼   ► Not like the stupid tiny one on the GameCube controller, which was impossible to tell which direction you're pressing

00:41:11 ◼   ► Even though it was a cross. Anyway, I didn't like that circle, but setting that aside

00:41:15 ◼   ► Even if you're comparing it to a full-size good d-pad

00:41:19 ◼   ► The most important thing this this touchpad has despite the fact that the remote is the wrong shape despite the fact that it's kind of

00:41:24 ◼   ► hard to reach to the touchpad area over all the buttons and everything and safely get

00:41:29 ◼   ► to it without accidentally swiping when you pick it up.

00:41:32 ◼   ► The most important thing it has is, gets you out of the nightmare realm of controlling

00:41:39 ◼   ► anything on your television, which used to be right up on Apple TV and on your actual

00:41:44 ◼   ► television and I've never used the Roku remotes or anything like that so I don't know what

00:41:47 ◼   ► they're like, but for the longest time doing anything on your television, all you had was

00:41:51 ◼   ► button presses.

00:41:52 ◼   ► So anytime you were faced with anything

00:41:55 ◼   ► that had a lot of stuff on the screen

00:41:56 ◼   ► and you wanted to go through it,

00:41:58 ◼   ► but you wanted to be able to select

00:41:59 ◼   ► any one of those things,

00:42:00 ◼   ► whether it's letters in the alphabet,

00:42:02 ◼   ► list items in a big list or anything like that,

00:42:04 ◼   ► you had to go next, next, next, next, next,

00:42:06 ◼   ► right, right, up, up, down, down, left, left

00:42:08 ◼   ► for you to do the contra code

00:42:09 ◼   ► to try to get to the thing that you want on your screen.

00:42:12 ◼   ► You never had a way to go more than one thing.

00:42:15 ◼   ► And so, yeah, on the TiVo, they did some other things

00:42:18 ◼   ► like, hey, on this menu, it's such a pain to go

00:42:20 ◼   ► through the whole list, use channel up and channel down

00:42:22 ◼   ► to go a page at a time, but even that was like discrete.

00:42:24 ◼   ► It's discrete versus continuous.

00:42:26 ◼   ► Having a touch pad and adding a little bit of momentum

00:42:29 ◼   ► is incredibly freeing because if you see something

00:42:32 ◼   ► that's at the very top or the very left or the very right,

00:42:34 ◼   ► you can flick over to it and yeah,

00:42:35 ◼   ► it's not gonna be precise, but it's so much better

00:42:38 ◼   ► than having to go one, two, three, four, five, six, seven,

00:42:41 ◼   ► one, two, three, four, five, one, two, three, four, five,

00:42:42 ◼   ► six, seven, mentally, even if not speed wise,

00:42:45 ◼   ► even if you were stop watching me

00:42:46 ◼   ► and it was actually slower, mentally speaking,

00:42:49 ◼   ► it feels better to me not to be stuck in this like,

00:42:52 ◼   ► hateful game of Frogger or Crossy Road where you can always go hop, hop, hop, hop, hop.

00:42:56 ◼   ► Now, the touchpad they chose to do it on, the shape of the touchpad, the fact that it like bends down,

00:43:01 ◼   ► the fact that the whole top of the remote is made of glass,

00:43:03 ◼   ► the feel of the physical click and everything, all that is bad.

00:43:06 ◼   ► Like, but I'm here to defend the concept of finally divorcing the television from a discrete single step

00:43:14 ◼   ► or a single page at a time interface because you finally have more than just buttons.

00:43:18 ◼   ► And the sort of advanced things that I was talking about, Marco you should try this,

00:43:22 ◼   ► it doesn't help with the accidental swiping for scrubbing because that's all terrible, but

00:43:25 ◼   ► use it like a d-pad. Don't try to do the swiping. Eventually

00:43:29 ◼   ► I gave up on getting my thumb to correctly swipe up and down to get the

00:43:32 ◼   ► ability to register it. Just use it as if it's a d-pad.

00:43:35 ◼   ► I like it because you don't have to press all the way down because I really don't like that click, like trying to play

00:43:40 ◼   ► Crossy Road, speaking of on the thing, or Alto's Adventure. I didn't like having to press down and already click.

00:43:45 ◼   ► I wish these game developers had accepted a tap instead of a click because I don't like hearing click click click click click

00:43:50 ◼   ► It's pretty noisy and it doesn't feel good doesn't feel good as a game controller at all

00:43:54 ◼   ► It feels laggy and it doesn't you know, I don't like it. But anyway, uh,

00:43:57 ◼   ► Just touch the touchpad on the left go left touch the touchpad on the right to go right touch the top of the touchpad

00:44:02 ◼   ► To go up touch the bottom of the touchpad to go down. Don't click it. Just touch it

00:44:06 ◼   ► If you if you want to go I rather go right right right down down down

00:44:12 ◼   ► You can do that much faster if you don't have to actually physically depress a button

00:44:15 ◼   ► so I

00:44:17 ◼   ► Am pro having something I can swipe to navigate and I am pro having something that registers my touch to do interesting things

00:44:25 ◼   ► The particular implementation on this remote is not ideal, but I would still rather use this remote than the old one

00:44:32 ◼   ► it's not a humongous win, but it's a big enough win that I would never like because you know, I still have my

00:44:37 ◼   ► Regular Apple TV remote with the circle on it, which I never use

00:44:41 ◼   ► I would never swap that for this one and I probably wouldn't swap

00:44:45 ◼   ► The Tivo remote that I was using with my old Apple TV with this one because I you know like Marco said you're missing a Siri

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00:44:57 ◼   ► integer number of screen items away from where I was I

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00:47:32 ◼   ► the best value in the shaving business, bar none.

00:47:35 ◼   ► Harrys.com, use promo code ATP.

00:47:37 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

00:47:38 ◼   ► - All right.

00:47:40 ◼   ► So any other thoughts on the Apple TV?

00:47:42 ◼   ► - I do have more.

00:47:43 ◼   ► So many thoughts from just an hour of using this thing.

00:47:46 ◼   ► - I am surprised.

00:47:47 ◼   ► - A lot of people have asked me about the video scrubbing.

00:47:50 ◼   ► I've talked about my anger with how video scrubbing works

00:47:53 ◼   ► in most television attached devices.

00:47:56 ◼   ► And these days, also with many things

00:47:58 ◼   ► that are in web pages or on iPhones.

00:48:02 ◼   ► And I have heard a lot of good reports about the Apple TV

00:48:04 ◼   ► and I'm happy to say they all seem to be true.

00:48:07 ◼   ► This does scrubbing exactly the way I always wanted it

00:48:10 ◼   ► to be done.

00:48:11 ◼   ► And this is another instance where the little swipey pad

00:48:13 ◼   ► comes in handy.

00:48:14 ◼   ► One of the worst things about video scrubbing

00:48:17 ◼   ► with if you just have buttons is,

00:48:19 ◼   ► if you go to the end of the movie and you're like,

00:48:23 ◼   ► what was that scene in the middle?

00:48:24 ◼   ► I wanna look at that thing again.

00:48:25 ◼   ► All you can do is perhaps press the rewind button

00:48:29 ◼   ► multiple times to go like 1x speed 10x speed 20x speed and then it's going

00:48:33 ◼   ► really fast then you have to hit the pause button so you don't overshoot it

00:48:36 ◼   ► or you try to slow it down like it's difficult to drive the little the play

00:48:41 ◼   ► head in that way with it with a series of buttons and the other difficulty I

00:48:45 ◼   ► was complained about is if you want to go to the middle of the thing or jump

00:48:49 ◼   ► back half an hour or something like that very often attempting to navigate at all

00:48:54 ◼   ► just causes the whole thing to freeze and essentially do the television app

00:48:57 ◼   ► equivalent of beach ball where it's trying to load the video or the

00:49:01 ◼   ► thumbnail or wants to show you a frame of video and you're like just go to 30

00:49:04 ◼   ► minutes in you feel like you wish you could have someplace where you could

00:49:07 ◼   ► just type three zero colon zero zero go through that offset now don't do

00:49:11 ◼   ► anything else don't try to show me the video sliding past I don't care what you

00:49:14 ◼   ► do I just want you to move that little playhead to 30 minutes and the Apple TV

00:49:20 ◼   ► at least playing like all the things that I tried mostly like television

00:49:23 ◼   ► shows and movies from iTunes maybe it's up to other apps to do the same thing I

00:49:26 ◼   ► I think I tried HBO and Showtime and Netflix as well,

00:49:29 ◼   ► and they seem to do similarly well.

00:49:30 ◼   ► But anyway, certainly for the Apple things,

00:49:33 ◼   ► while you're playing, as Marco found out,

00:49:35 ◼   ► if you swipe the little touch pad, it moves the play head,

00:49:39 ◼   ► and it moves the play head no matter what immediately.

00:49:42 ◼   ► If it has video to show you,

00:49:44 ◼   ► it will change the little thumbnails and stuff.

00:49:46 ◼   ► If it doesn't have video to show you,

00:49:47 ◼   ► the thumbnail will be whatever the last frame was,

00:49:49 ◼   ► but it moves the play head.

00:49:51 ◼   ► It does not wait.

00:49:52 ◼   ► It does not beach ball.

00:49:53 ◼   ► It just goes where you want it.

00:49:54 ◼   ► It shows you the time offset,

00:49:56 ◼   ► and it is glorious.

00:49:57 ◼   ► It's like finally, finally they understood

00:49:59 ◼   ► that that is the most important thing.

00:50:01 ◼   ► All the other stuff I don't care.

00:50:02 ◼   ► Like if you can do it, fine.

00:50:03 ◼   ► Because I did, I loaded like an episode of Legend of Korra

00:50:06 ◼   ► or something to get all the, you know, a small episode.

00:50:08 ◼   ► So it had all the things.

00:50:09 ◼   ► It will show you live thumbnails as you scrub around

00:50:11 ◼   ► if it can, but if it can't,

00:50:12 ◼   ► it always prioritizes moving the thumbnail.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And then when you hit the button to play from that position,

00:50:17 ◼   ► maybe it takes a little while for it to get the video

00:50:18 ◼   ► and start playing into that position.

00:50:20 ◼   ► It's fine, whatever.

00:50:21 ◼   ► When you're watching, you can tap the,

00:50:25 ◼   ► you can click the left side of the touch pad.

00:50:28 ◼   ► This is another good UI type thing.

00:50:29 ◼   ► If you rest your thumb on the left side of the touch pad,

00:50:31 ◼   ► it puts a little 10 second rewind icon on the screen,

00:50:35 ◼   ► letting you know, hey, if you were to press here,

00:50:38 ◼   ► it would go back 10 seconds.

00:50:39 ◼   ► You haven't actually done the back 10 seconds yet,

00:50:40 ◼   ► but it's telling you.

00:50:41 ◼   ► And same thing if you would just lay your thumb

00:50:42 ◼   ► on the right side of the touch pad,

00:50:44 ◼   ► it says that you can go forward 30.

00:50:45 ◼   ► I wish those numbers were adjustable.

00:50:46 ◼   ► I'm not sure if they are.

00:50:47 ◼   ► But anyway, if you tap those buttons,

00:50:49 ◼   ► you can go forward and back 30 seconds.

00:50:50 ◼   ► Of course, we've all seen the cool Siri demos

00:50:52 ◼   ► of what did he say?

00:50:53 ◼   ► and then it goes back some amount of seconds,

00:50:56 ◼   ► turns on subtitles, shows you what you just saw,

00:50:59 ◼   ► and then turns the subtitles off automatically,

00:51:01 ◼   ► which I think is a very clever feature.

00:51:02 ◼   ► The only difficulty of it is

00:51:04 ◼   ► if you miss an entire conversation.

00:51:06 ◼   ► I don't know how it picks how far to go back.

00:51:07 ◼   ► I don't know how it picks when to turn the subtitles off.

00:51:10 ◼   ► They had to make a compromise there.

00:51:11 ◼   ► It seems like a reasonable compromise, but anyway.

00:51:14 ◼   ► You can swipe down from the top to pull the menu item down

00:51:17 ◼   ► to turn on and off the subtitles.

00:51:18 ◼   ► Another thing that was a little bit annoying to do

00:51:19 ◼   ► if you didn't know the secret shortcuts

00:51:20 ◼   ► with the old Apple TV.

00:51:23 ◼   ► You can fast forward and rewind scan.

00:51:25 ◼   ► It's still not as capable at fast forward rewind scanning

00:51:28 ◼   ► as like a PlayStation 3 is where you have from like 1.5X

00:51:32 ◼   ► with pitch adjusted audio still playing

00:51:34 ◼   ► to all up to like 120X.

00:51:36 ◼   ► The reason the PlayStation 3 needs 120X

00:51:38 ◼   ► is because it doesn't have flicks scrubbing

00:51:40 ◼   ► through the whole thing.

00:51:41 ◼   ► That's not a problem on the Apple TV.

00:51:43 ◼   ► I can go right to the middle of something

00:51:44 ◼   ► or right to the end or right to three quarters through

00:51:46 ◼   ► very easily.

00:51:47 ◼   ► Whereas on the PlayStation, I would have to go to 120X mode

00:51:50 ◼   ► and move over to it or whatever.

00:51:51 ◼   ► But anyway, big thumbs up on the video scrubbing.

00:51:54 ◼   ► They finally did it right as far as I can tell.

00:51:57 ◼   ► If applications do it wrong, I will at least know

00:51:59 ◼   ► that it is not the fault of the hardware or the OS.

00:52:02 ◼   ► It's only the fault of the people

00:52:03 ◼   ► implementing those applications,

00:52:04 ◼   ► not doing it the way Apple does it.

00:52:07 ◼   ► - I'm impressed.

00:52:08 ◼   ► I really thought you were gonna find something

00:52:10 ◼   ► to dislike about this, but sounds like we're good to go.

00:52:13 ◼   ► That's excellent.

00:52:14 ◼   ► - No, I mean, really, I've heard only,

00:52:16 ◼   ► I haven't done much video scrubbing with it myself

00:52:18 ◼   ► 'cause I'm not much of a scrubber, I guess.

00:52:21 ◼   ► But I've heard only great things about it from people who care more about these things

00:52:25 ◼   ► or use it more than I do, like Jon. I mean, I think that is one thing. Almost everybody

00:52:30 ◼   ► has agreed that the setup process can be very bumpy with the number of times you have to

00:52:35 ◼   ► enter passwords on that terrible key line. But almost everyone also agrees that the video

00:52:40 ◼   ► seeking behavior and that whole engine that is in there is incredibly good. And also,

00:52:46 ◼   ► I mean this is just good hardware.

00:52:49 ◼   ► You know this has the A8, it has two gigs of RAM,

00:52:52 ◼   ► it's fast.

00:52:53 ◼   ► I am optimistic for the future of this platform

00:52:57 ◼   ► just because of what everyone else is going to do with it.

00:52:59 ◼   ► You know what Apple does with it is still a big question mark

00:53:02 ◼   ► and Apple's stuff recently has been inconsistent I would say.

00:53:06 ◼   ► You know like some stuff they nail pretty well,

00:53:08 ◼   ► some stuff is pretty half baked even well after launch.

00:53:13 ◼   ► So Apple stuff I think will be less consistent

00:53:15 ◼   ► But third party stuff, I think there's a lot here to do.

00:53:20 ◼   ► There's a lot of hardware to use.

00:53:22 ◼   ► And we'll talk about gaming in a sec,

00:53:24 ◼   ► maybe after the next sponsor break,

00:53:25 ◼   ► 'cause there's lots to talk about here.

00:53:27 ◼   ► But I do think there's a lot of potential here

00:53:29 ◼   ► for developers.

00:53:30 ◼   ► I mean, I did start, I don't know if I'm gonna actually

00:53:33 ◼   ► finish and release such a thing,

00:53:35 ◼   ► but I did actually start porting Overcast to it,

00:53:38 ◼   ► just to see how much work will this take?

00:53:41 ◼   ► Do I have to really make a lot of special cases?

00:53:43 ◼   ► Is it going to need a whole lot of work to do,

00:53:46 ◼   ► or will it need relatively little?

00:53:48 ◼   ► And so I've been playing with the SDK,

00:53:49 ◼   ► I'm playing with the hardware a little bit,

00:53:50 ◼   ► and it is really, really nice.

00:53:54 ◼   ► Like, interface challenges are gonna certainly be there,

00:53:58 ◼   ► but it is really nice to develop for

00:54:01 ◼   ► because it is basically iOS minus some stuff.

00:54:05 ◼   ► But it is very, most of iOS is there,

00:54:08 ◼   ► and the hardware is very capable,

00:54:10 ◼   ► and this is the baseline.

00:54:12 ◼   ► In five years from now, developers will be complaining

00:54:15 ◼   ► they have to go all the way back and support the A8.

00:54:18 ◼   ► But right now, a new hardware line where the A8

00:54:21 ◼   ► is the minimum is pretty nice.

00:54:24 ◼   ► And also, it has AC power.

00:54:27 ◼   ► So you can be as power inefficient as you want.

00:54:30 ◼   ► So you can do things that really crank that CPU hard.

00:54:33 ◼   ► So it is gonna be a really, really nice developer platform.

00:54:38 ◼   ► I do have concerns about whether it will be worth

00:54:41 ◼   ► developers doing a lot for it so soon.

00:54:45 ◼   ► And that I think remains to be seen.

00:54:48 ◼   ► - Yeah, the app, I went to the app store first thing,

00:54:49 ◼   ► I was surprised when you load the thing up,

00:54:52 ◼   ► like it looks empty, like where are all the icons,

00:54:53 ◼   ► because the old Apple TV, it would just start off

00:54:56 ◼   ► with like tons of icons on your screen,

00:54:57 ◼   ► and new icons would appear, whether you wanted them or not,

00:54:59 ◼   ► you'd have to turn on like the, whatever the parental

00:55:02 ◼   ► controls to make them disappear and stuff.

00:55:04 ◼   ► This thing comes out and there's the Apple icons

00:55:06 ◼   ► for the Apple stuff, and settings and search, and that's it.

00:55:10 ◼   ► So immediately the first stop is always,

00:55:11 ◼   ► oh, I gotta go with Netflix, HBO, Showtime,

00:55:15 ◼   ► all the other different apps that I did.

00:55:16 ◼   ► And I went in to get those and I don't know

00:55:20 ◼   ► if this was just the top list or whatever,

00:55:22 ◼   ► but on the first screen or screen or two in the App Store

00:55:27 ◼   ► was all the things I wanted.

00:55:28 ◼   ► I got Alto's Adventure, Crossy Road, Netflix, HBO,

00:55:33 ◼   ► Showtime, FX, USA, ABC, NBC, CBS, they're all there.

00:55:40 ◼   ► To restore my Apple TV to its previous level of functionality,

00:55:43 ◼   ► including only the apps that I actually use

00:55:45 ◼   ► or that the kids use, was pretty easy to do.

00:55:48 ◼   ► When I went to download this,

00:55:49 ◼   ► I think this is the second time it asked me

00:55:50 ◼   ► for my Apple ID password, and I entered it in once,

00:55:53 ◼   ► and it asked me, "Do you want to have to enter that?

00:55:56 ◼   ► "Do you wanna have to enter this

00:55:57 ◼   ► "every time you make a purchase?"

00:55:59 ◼   ► And I said no, because I really don't wanna enter it

00:56:02 ◼   ► every time I make a purchase.

00:56:03 ◼   ► - I accidentally clicked the yes on that,

00:56:05 ◼   ► because I just misused the trackpad.

00:56:08 ◼   ► It was another one of my many errors.

00:56:10 ◼   ► So then I had to go dig around in settings, enter it again.

00:56:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I'm a little bit wary about that

00:56:15 ◼   ► because I mean, really it should have integration

00:56:17 ◼   ► with touch ID, really the remote should have

00:56:18 ◼   ► a touch ID sensor on it.

00:56:19 ◼   ► There's so many gimmies here.

00:56:20 ◼   ► That's by the way, with the negativity about this,

00:56:23 ◼   ► all the people complaining about the setup process,

00:56:25 ◼   ► they're right, it's bad.

00:56:26 ◼   ► And it's like, it feels like an unforced error.

00:56:28 ◼   ► It was like, come on Apple, you know how to do this.

00:56:30 ◼   ► This is not your first Apple TV.

00:56:32 ◼   ► You have name brand technologies across your whole product

00:56:35 ◼   ► line that solve all of these problems.

00:56:37 ◼   ► You had an existing iOS app that worked with the old one that gave you a keyboard.

00:56:40 ◼   ► You've got Touch ID, you've got iCloud Keychain, you've got iCloud Photo Library, you've got

00:56:45 ◼   ► all these things, they're all just sitting there.

00:56:49 ◼   ► That's why it feels so bad.

00:56:50 ◼   ► It's like this setup experience is worse than the Apple norm for what seems like no good

00:56:55 ◼   ► reasons.

00:56:56 ◼   ► Theories I've heard, I think Jason Snell feel this theory, that the Apple TV was actually

00:56:59 ◼   ► done a long time ago and wasn't launched because they were waiting for the content deals and

00:57:03 ◼   ► eventually they said, "Well, content deal,

00:57:05 ◼   ► schmontent deal, we're shipping it."

00:57:07 ◼   ► And so that's why it doesn't have support for technologies

00:57:11 ◼   ► and things that are old hat as far as we're concerned,

00:57:13 ◼   ► but they weren't old hat when this work was actually done

00:57:15 ◼   ► on the Apple TV team.

00:57:16 ◼   ► And that the Apple TV team was more or less disbanded

00:57:18 ◼   ► and sent to do other things while the Apple TV

00:57:20 ◼   ► just stood there.

00:57:20 ◼   ► I don't know if there's any truth behind that,

00:57:22 ◼   ► but that's what it feels like.

00:57:24 ◼   ► So that's why people are complaining

00:57:25 ◼   ► because it can be really bad like it was for Jason,

00:57:27 ◼   ► where he's got to accept the 10 new terms and conditions

00:57:29 ◼   ► and he's got to do that on his Mac

00:57:30 ◼   ► and you're entering your stupid long password

00:57:32 ◼   ► million times with that terrible keyboard and the whole time you're just

00:57:35 ◼   ► grumbling why don't you use the iOS app that is all terrible and that's

00:57:38 ◼   ► definitely worthy of complaining about but if you power through that crap kind

00:57:42 ◼   ► of like I power through that stuff with my Wii U to Wii transfer experience you

00:57:48 ◼   ► come out the other side you're left with a product that I think is clearly better

00:57:52 ◼   ► than the old Apple TV in many many ways and that shows promise and like and the

00:57:57 ◼   ► promise is frustrating to like talk about I love the fact that there's a

00:58:00 ◼   ► touchpad on the remote, I hate pretty much everything else about the remote.

00:58:02 ◼   ► Like I would like a good remote with a touchpad.

00:58:04 ◼   ► And one other thing I would throw in with a touchpad on the remote, when you go to the

00:58:09 ◼   ► app switcher, which by the way, people might not know it's there, you double tap the home

00:58:13 ◼   ► button, which looks like a big picture of a TV on your remote, it will bring up an iOS-like

00:58:17 ◼   ► app switcher that shows all your apps, kind of like the old style app switcher, the iOS

00:58:21 ◼   ► 8 app switcher, shows each screen next to each other.

00:58:24 ◼   ► When you go between them, you have to basically do the equivalent of a D-pad input, swipe,

00:58:29 ◼   ► or tap tap, I would love it if I could touch my thumb

00:58:33 ◼   ► to the touch pad and as I move my thumb,

00:58:37 ◼   ► the things move on the screen tracking my thumb.

00:58:39 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:58:39 ◼   ► Like in other words, more like an iOS scrolling type thing

00:58:42 ◼   ► where yeah, you can flick, but if you flick,

00:58:43 ◼   ► you're flicking like you're flicking the screen in iOS,

00:58:45 ◼   ► as opposed to what this thing looks like it's doing is,

00:58:48 ◼   ► I'm waiting to get a gesture that I interpret as go left one

00:58:52 ◼   ► and it's not quite bad.

00:58:53 ◼   ► You can swipe past more than one at a time, I think,

00:58:55 ◼   ► but anyway, it just feels a little bit off to me.

00:58:58 ◼   ► A lot of that is because the touchpad is too darn small.

00:59:01 ◼   ► But anyway, yeah, a lot of negativity

00:59:03 ◼   ► about the setup process, all of which I agree with,

00:59:05 ◼   ► all of which should be complained about,

00:59:06 ◼   ► and all of which were just really angry at Apple

00:59:08 ◼   ► because they just seem like unforced errors.

00:59:11 ◼   ► - Yeah, I mean, once you have it set up,

00:59:13 ◼   ► it seems like a pretty nice device.

00:59:14 ◼   ► But again, we're all hitting this right now,

00:59:16 ◼   ► and there's gonna be a lot of people

00:59:18 ◼   ► who are hitting this this holiday season

00:59:20 ◼   ► as they get their first new Apple TV,

00:59:22 ◼   ► possibly their first Apple TV ever.

00:59:24 ◼   ► And I do think that it seems like they rushed it out

00:59:29 ◼   ► to make this holiday season,

00:59:32 ◼   ► but it doesn't seem like it's ready.

00:59:33 ◼   ► There's so many little exceptions.

00:59:35 ◼   ► It really does seem like it could have used

00:59:37 ◼   ► six more months of polish.

00:59:38 ◼   ► - It's not like the features that are there aren't polished,

00:59:43 ◼   ► they just aren't there.

00:59:44 ◼   ► Why the hell can I not enter text on my phone?

00:59:47 ◼   ► That's not a polish issue.

00:59:48 ◼   ► That's just a plain feature thing.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And maybe the other things you could say as polished

00:59:53 ◼   ► like oh, because Apple recently updated the terms and conditions for the App Store.

00:59:58 ◼   ► If you haven't agreed to those or if your credit card is expired or you have to enter

01:00:02 ◼   ► your credit card code again or anything involving purchasing from Apple that is messed up, the

01:00:09 ◼   ► television doesn't have a way for you to fix that apparently.

01:00:12 ◼   ► You have to go back to your Mac and try to do it in iTunes which feels really weird.

01:00:17 ◼   ► Kind of the same thing with, this is not Apple's fault entirely, but like activating the HBO

01:00:22 ◼   ► Go app if you're a subscriber to HBO like I am they all have a thing that says like oh go to your web browser

01:00:26 ◼   ► and go to HBO go comm slash activate and enter the six letter code and

01:00:31 ◼   ► You try to and you go to the HBO go website and wants you to log in with your cable providers

01:00:35 ◼   ► Login credentials and it pops up a little iframe and now you have the Verizon iframed inside HBO go

01:00:41 ◼   ► which is all to try to get your Apple TV to work and

01:00:44 ◼   ► That is all gross and is gonna confuse many a person on Christmas morning or whenever during the holidays

01:00:51 ◼   ► There's only so much Apple can do to fix that, but surely Apple can fix the equivalent of

01:00:56 ◼   ► those experiences in its own ecosystem.

01:00:59 ◼   ► And so that maybe is an area of polish.

01:01:01 ◼   ► But yeah, just like I felt like if the story of them having it done and then disbanding

01:01:07 ◼   ► the team and waiting for content deals, if that's even remotely true, that's silly because

01:01:12 ◼   ► they just should have left those people on it and said, "Just maintain this and keep

01:01:16 ◼   ► pace."

01:01:17 ◼   ► And so when we introduce a new technology or a new thing, make sure it's integrated.

01:01:21 ◼   ► And by the way, while you're there,

01:01:22 ◼   ► find those corner cases for the people

01:01:23 ◼   ► who haven't agreed to the new iTunes terms

01:01:25 ◼   ► and you can just put a UI for that in the thing or whatever.

01:01:29 ◼   ► - I mean, if I had to guess,

01:01:30 ◼   ► I'm guessing that the biggest reason why this,

01:01:33 ◼   ► why there's so many rough edges

01:01:34 ◼   ► around entering your password, logging into the store,

01:01:37 ◼   ► different store issues,

01:01:39 ◼   ► is because this crosses departments within Apple.

01:01:42 ◼   ► This goes from the engineering department

01:01:45 ◼   ► into the ediQ-led store infrastructure area, right?

01:01:49 ◼   ► And so like that, crossing those lines

01:01:52 ◼   ► has always been very messy in the products.

01:01:55 ◼   ► That's always where people hit a lot of issues

01:01:57 ◼   ► and errors and bad user experiences.

01:02:00 ◼   ► And I've heard so many things from various people

01:02:03 ◼   ► inside and outside of Apple, some of which conflict,

01:02:06 ◼   ► but most of which tend to agree,

01:02:09 ◼   ► anytime the other teams need something from the store team,

01:02:14 ◼   ► it's hard to get, or it's a problem in some way,

01:02:16 ◼   ► or it takes too long, or something.

01:02:18 ◼   ► there seems to be a lot of friction there.

01:02:20 ◼   ► And I don't know whose fault it is,

01:02:21 ◼   ► it doesn't really matter.

01:02:22 ◼   ► The result is that when the products reach us,

01:02:26 ◼   ► the consumers, we see that friction.

01:02:28 ◼   ► In the same way that like, as Microsoft was so famous

01:02:31 ◼   ► for infighting back in the day,

01:02:32 ◼   ► I don't know how bad it is now,

01:02:34 ◼   ► but back in the day they were famous for it,

01:02:35 ◼   ► like between Windows and Office,

01:02:36 ◼   ► and a lot of times those infights

01:02:39 ◼   ► would affect customers negatively,

01:02:41 ◼   ► and really affect the whole company negatively as a result.

01:02:44 ◼   ► We see that in Apple in the way that the software products

01:02:48 ◼   ► have to interact with the store backend

01:02:50 ◼   ► and anything that uses the store backend.

01:02:52 ◼   ► And again, who knows?

01:02:54 ◼   ► I'm sure there are lots of smart people working on that,

01:02:56 ◼   ► but whatever the cause,

01:02:57 ◼   ► things that need to interact with that

01:03:00 ◼   ► tend to work worse than the rest of the stack.

01:03:02 ◼   ► And the Apple TV as a product

01:03:05 ◼   ► depends so heavily on the store backend

01:03:09 ◼   ► that I think that is really causing a lot of this friction.

01:03:13 ◼   ► And there might be tons of well-meaning teams

01:03:16 ◼   ► and people inside of Apple who are trying to fix this,

01:03:18 ◼   ► but even simply through the way these teams are organized

01:03:21 ◼   ► and divided between each other,

01:03:23 ◼   ► it just might be really hard to do

01:03:24 ◼   ► and just therefore just doesn't happen,

01:03:26 ◼   ► or doesn't happen well enough in practice.

01:03:29 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's not all aspects of the store either.

01:03:30 ◼   ► It just seems to be the things that have to do

01:03:32 ◼   ► with account management.

01:03:33 ◼   ► So for example, once I entered my password

01:03:35 ◼   ► and I was downloading all those apps,

01:03:37 ◼   ► when I tapped them a little install or get icon,

01:03:40 ◼   ► I don't know why sometimes it said install,

01:03:41 ◼   ► sometimes it said get or whatever.

01:03:42 ◼   ► Anyway, they downloaded really fast.

01:03:45 ◼   ► I was just basically going through tap, tap, tap,

01:03:47 ◼   ► like it felt fast.

01:03:49 ◼   ► A little circle progress indicator filled really fast

01:03:52 ◼   ► and all of them, maybe they're all tiny apps

01:03:53 ◼   ► 'cause they're all TVML and they're just tiny little,

01:03:55 ◼   ► but everything about that felt fast.

01:03:58 ◼   ► And yet when you had to deal with anything having to do

01:04:00 ◼   ► with, hey, am I signed into my account?

01:04:02 ◼   ► Have I done any sort of administrative bookkeeping stuff

01:04:04 ◼   ► related to my account?

01:04:05 ◼   ► Do I need to enter the little three digit code

01:04:07 ◼   ► from the back of my credit card again?

01:04:09 ◼   ► Is there a UI to do that in here?

01:04:10 ◼   ► All that just felt like it was lacking

01:04:12 ◼   ► and they just punted that and said,

01:04:13 ◼   ► "Well, there's 17 other ways for you to do that.

01:04:15 ◼   ► You can't do that on your Apple TV.

01:04:17 ◼   ► We're just going to throw up something in front of your face that says, 'Go do this

01:04:19 ◼   ► someplace else and then come back here and everything will work.'"

01:04:23 ◼   ► And even with the weird sign and stuff, like going to the HBO thing and signing in through

01:04:26 ◼   ► Verizon and all that other stuff, it's like, "Okay, well, your device is activated now.

01:04:32 ◼   ► Go back to your TV and it should be activated."

01:04:35 ◼   ► And I always walk into the next room to go back to my TV dreading the fact that I'm going

01:04:38 ◼   ► to look at the TV and it's just going to be sitting there saying, "Please sign it."

01:04:41 ◼   ► know, like, the dots won't connect.

01:04:44 ◼   ► If that happens, like, what the hell do you do?

01:04:46 ◼   ► You just go back and try it again.

01:04:47 ◼   ► But every time I did it, it actually worked.

01:04:48 ◼   ► And maybe I just lucked out on it.

01:04:50 ◼   ► But that is not a seamless experience.

01:04:53 ◼   ► Dealing with Apple's own store is still

01:04:54 ◼   ► not a seamless experience.

01:04:55 ◼   ► But some aspects of it are good.

01:04:57 ◼   ► The video downloads fast.

01:04:58 ◼   ► The apps download fast.

01:04:59 ◼   ► The apps launch fast.

01:05:01 ◼   ► This thing feels faster than Mytivo,

01:05:03 ◼   ► which is ridiculous, considering Mytivo costs, like,

01:05:05 ◼   ► five times as much, literally, than this.

01:05:07 ◼   ► But it feels faster.

01:05:08 ◼   ► And everything about it, like, I

01:05:11 ◼   ► I can kind of tell that it has two gigs of RAM because I went to the AppSwitcher and

01:05:14 ◼   ► I went back to a game that I had played like a half an hour ago and the game was still

01:05:17 ◼   ► in memory sitting on the place where I left off.

01:05:21 ◼   ► That is a sort of premium quality TV box experience.

01:05:26 ◼   ► So it felt good.

01:05:27 ◼   ► But yeah, it's just embarrassing.

01:05:29 ◼   ► The setup stuff is just embarrassing.

01:05:30 ◼   ► And I still think the remote is kind of embarrassing because I can't imagine, like, maybe people

01:05:37 ◼   ► will eventually come to appreciate what I was just describing, the swipiness versus the tapping,

01:05:41 ◼   ► but that may be more of just a personal thing where I hate waiting for the machine to do

01:05:46 ◼   ► anything and I hate the fact that I have to, I know I'm going to have to depress and release

01:05:51 ◼   ► this little rubberized button to operate a mechanical switch seven times to get to the

01:05:55 ◼   ► seventh item. That probably doesn't annoy other people as much as it annoys me, and in fact,

01:05:59 ◼   ► other people probably feel more comfortable feeling that physical click seven times to get

01:06:03 ◼   ► get from place to place.

01:06:04 ◼   ► So I don't think they're gonna pick up on those.

01:06:07 ◼   ► You know, the things that appeal to me about the remote

01:06:09 ◼   ► may not be the things that appeal to other people

01:06:10 ◼   ► and everything else about the remote is just terrible,

01:06:13 ◼   ► as discussed in previous shows.

01:06:14 ◼   ► It's just too small, it's the wrong shape,

01:06:16 ◼   ► it doesn't feel good, it doesn't look good,

01:06:18 ◼   ► it doesn't light up, it's not easy to find,

01:06:20 ◼   ► it falls down couch cushions.

01:06:21 ◼   ► If you dig for it, you're gonna accidentally

01:06:22 ◼   ► scrub your video and be pissed off.

01:06:24 ◼   ► Yeah.

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01:08:29 ◼   ► So let's talk about Apple TV gaming.

01:08:32 ◼   ► - Okay.

01:08:35 ◼   ► - Wow, that was a long pause.

01:08:37 ◼   ► So Jon, I'm assuming that your gaming experience

01:08:39 ◼   ► has been limited in the short time you've had it.

01:08:41 ◼   ► - Well, here's what I played.

01:08:42 ◼   ► I played Crossy Road, but also Adventure.

01:08:44 ◼   ► Two games that I was already familiar with.

01:08:46 ◼   ► I thought Crossy Road was,

01:08:48 ◼   ► well I thought also Adventure was the best test

01:08:51 ◼   ► because it only has one button modulo

01:08:53 ◼   ► the wingsuit activation and some other stuff,

01:08:55 ◼   ► But for the most part you're you're just tapping a button and and that's that's why I said before that I think that the

01:09:02 ◼   ► The remote isn't like that the touchpad that you press it

01:09:07 ◼   ► Actually, the touchpad actually bends like it bends the tip of it goes down

01:09:11 ◼   ► That's not a good button

01:09:13 ◼   ► Like if that's gonna be the main button you press like to start doing a flip or jump or whatever in alto's adventure

01:09:18 ◼   ► It just doesn't feel good as a button. It does not feel like a controller button. It is I mean, it's big

01:09:24 ◼   ► It's easy to find it's not like you know, it's good to be the primary button. It's just doesn't feel good

01:09:28 ◼   ► It's a pretty loud click. It feels more like I don't know what it feels like

01:09:33 ◼   ► Maybe maybe clicking a mouse button. It's as if

01:09:36 ◼   ► Every time you want to make Mario jump you click an old-style mouse button

01:09:41 ◼   ► It's just doesn't it doesn't feel like an a button essentially, right?

01:09:44 ◼   ► Yeah, and this this this seems like a lot of travel on it and just it feels kind of like there's a little bit of

01:09:49 ◼   ► Lag I know that probably isn't lag. I don't know what I'm feeling

01:09:52 ◼   ► Maybe I'm feeling like the fact that my thumb has to go through a lot of travel. I don't know

01:09:56 ◼   ► I've I've spent a lot of time using all sorts of controllers

01:09:59 ◼   ► This a doesn't feel like a controller and B doesn't feel good. We're just kind of a shame

01:10:03 ◼   ► That's why I was wishing like if they just did tap or whatever cross your road

01:10:08 ◼   ► Similar cross your road. I feel like is a little bit better because it's kind of more deliberate

01:10:12 ◼   ► I guess where you're going hop hop hop, but even that

01:10:15 ◼   ► And then cross road of course

01:10:16 ◼   ► You have to do the side swipe on the up swipe to do the directional changes

01:10:19 ◼   ► I found that the directional change is frustratingly inaccurate in the iOS games where you're swiping on the screen

01:10:24 ◼   ► I don't know if it's because I'm trying to it's kind of like playing Zaxxon

01:10:28 ◼   ► You guys don't remember that but sort of isometric view of a game where I could never quite my my hand eye

01:10:35 ◼   ► Coordination connection could never quite get on the same page in terms of okay

01:10:39 ◼   ► So am I am I pressing up to the left like northwest?

01:10:44 ◼   ► To try to make my Zaxxon shift go left in ship space or am I pressing?

01:10:50 ◼   ► Directly west like is it is it relative or absolute control from the perspective of the ship or from the perspective?

01:10:56 ◼   ► I'm looking at the screen. It's very often in crossy road

01:10:58 ◼   ► I will swipe what looks like left along the ground, but it wants me to swipe left with respect to the screen anyway

01:11:05 ◼   ► Those problems seemed lessened somewhat by using the swipey remote for the television

01:11:10 ◼   ► I don't know why I did like on my first couple runs on Crossy Road. I hadn't played in a very long time

01:11:15 ◼   ► I did really well with the television. So I guess the control scheme is pretty okay for that

01:11:19 ◼   ► But the button is still pretty terrible performance wise it performs like an a8 so, you know, and those games are not challenging

01:11:24 ◼   ► The games launch fast

01:11:26 ◼   ► They they launched faster on a lot of our iOS devices because I don't have many iOS devices that are as fast as an aid

01:11:31 ◼   ► in the house

01:11:32 ◼   ► I

01:11:33 ◼   ► Can't imagine playing a quote-unquote real console game with that remote

01:11:38 ◼   ► I don't even like playing with it with the Wii remote sideways and that has a real d-pad on it. So

01:11:44 ◼   ► I don't know

01:11:46 ◼   ► Gaming wise the kids seem interested in it because they play a lot of iOS games

01:11:50 ◼   ► They're excited to play them on TV. We play two-player crossy road and that was a little fun twist as well

01:11:54 ◼   ► I don't know if I'll do a lot of gaming on it

01:11:57 ◼   ► I guess it depends on what games come out

01:11:59 ◼   ► But I know I would be more inclined to to take it seriously as a gaming device for my gaming needs

01:12:06 ◼   ► If it had what we know marker already bought which is a third-party control that looks like a console controller

01:12:12 ◼   ► Yeah, so about that controller. I haven't used it yet

01:12:15 ◼   ► It's it's it's charging up on my desk, and I'm probably gonna try it out tomorrow night

01:12:19 ◼   ► But it feels you know it's 50 bucks

01:12:22 ◼   ► Which I guess is in the round I mean what is like a ps4 controller costs like 40

01:12:27 ◼   ► They're more expensive than you think right 50 bucks is is reasonable a reasonable price

01:12:32 ◼   ► Is this what you should say what make and model this is it's the steel case nimbus

01:12:36 ◼   ► Which is this the only one so far? I think it might be you can use any

01:12:39 ◼   ► I think you use any made for iPhone controller with it. Okay. So anyway, it's not a great feeling controller

01:12:45 ◼   ► I will see how it goes in practice

01:12:47 ◼   ► But just like pushing the buttons just without it being plugged into anything

01:12:51 ◼   ► The d-pad does not feel very good. The buttons don't feel very good. It feels

01:12:55 ◼   ► Kind of like, you know like back in the day

01:12:58 ◼   ► I don't know

01:12:59 ◼   ► I don't know what the current market for these things would be but back when I had a Sega Genesis growing up

01:13:04 ◼   ► You'd occasionally be at a friend's house where they didn't want to spend the full $12 to get the the name-brand

01:13:11 ◼   ► Sega controller as their player 2 controller

01:13:15 ◼   ► So you'd be player 2 and you'd have like the like not the $12 nice one

01:13:20 ◼   ► But the $7 crappy one and it was like a third-party

01:13:23 ◼   ► Kind of cheap knockoff that tried to be as good as the as the real Sega one

01:13:28 ◼   ► but never was. This feels like one of those. Like compared to the other, compared to like

01:13:34 ◼   ► you know real Sony or Microsoft controllers or Nintendo controllers that are actually

01:13:38 ◼   ► like good, this just feels like a third party knock off kind of controller. It doesn't,

01:13:43 ◼   ► it doesn't feel like terrible, it just doesn't feel good. So all that aside, and there was

01:13:50 ◼   ► a great article that I put this link in the show notes that I wanted to bring up, there

01:13:52 ◼   ► was a great article on Polygon today I think that came out that was all about like you

01:13:57 ◼   ► know, like what are the best games on Apple TV and it talks about like you know how many

01:14:01 ◼   ► of them actually change noticeably if you're using this controller versus just using the

01:14:06 ◼   ► Siri remote. And like Rayman, like it becomes, like a lot of these games like in Rayman they

01:14:12 ◼   ► give the case where apparently normally if you just use the Apple TV remote the player

01:14:17 ◼   ► kind of just runs at a fixed speed and you're just controlling jumping and stuff and if

01:14:22 ◼   ► plug in a controller, then you have full control over the player. So it's like, the games change

01:14:28 ◼   ► in pretty substantial ways if you use one of these controllers. But in general, I think

01:14:34 ◼   ► there's going to be two main problems that this faces. Number one, these aren't going

01:14:39 ◼   ► to be AAA quality games, just because the economics are not going to work out for people

01:14:45 ◼   ► for a while, if ever.

01:14:46 ◼   ► Well, they could be shovelware. Rayman, you talked about, I'm pretty sure, is shovelware.

01:14:50 ◼   ► that is that is a high profile multi platform console game that they ported to iOS and now

01:14:56 ◼   ► Apple TV if it's the game it's Rayman Legends right?

01:14:58 ◼   ► It's Rayman something I don't know I haven't played it yet but it doesn't matter so there's

01:15:02 ◼   ► there's going to be obviously a lot of shovelware from from iPad and iPhone games of course

01:15:07 ◼   ► because it's easy but yeah so there's going to be issues of like you know the games aren't

01:15:12 ◼   ► going to be that great from from just like the the budget perspective because they're

01:15:17 ◼   ► they're not going to be able to make that much money.

01:15:19 ◼   ► Compared to selling it for 60 bucks on a console,

01:15:22 ◼   ► they're not going to make as much money on this device

01:15:25 ◼   ► that you're lucky if you can get 10 bucks up front

01:15:28 ◼   ► for a game or do some kind of terrible in-app purchase scheme

01:15:31 ◼   ► and the installed base for the Apple TV is going to be

01:15:33 ◼   ► smaller than the game consoles for a while.

01:15:36 ◼   ► Probably in the long term it'll eventually surpass them

01:15:39 ◼   ► but for at least a few years it's probably

01:15:41 ◼   ► going to be smaller.

01:15:42 ◼   ► So we'll see what happens there.

01:15:44 ◼   ► To me, I think what we're gonna see here,

01:15:47 ◼   ► I think it's kind of like YouTube versus HBO of games,

01:15:52 ◼   ► if that makes some sense.

01:15:54 ◼   ► The big budget AAA games, that's like the HBO

01:15:57 ◼   ► in this analogy, those are gonna go to the consoles

01:15:59 ◼   ► and the PCs, because that's where they can charge

01:16:01 ◼   ► the most money and really reach the most hardcore enthusiasts

01:16:04 ◼   ► who are willing to pay a premium to play those games

01:16:06 ◼   ► and to really get into them and to appeal to game

01:16:08 ◼   ► enthusiasts and everything.

01:16:09 ◼   ► Whereas YouTube is kinda like, well, anybody can throw

01:16:12 ◼   ► some stuff up here and most of it's gonna be garbage

01:16:14 ◼   ► some of it's gonna be good.

01:16:15 ◼   ► That I think is gonna be more like

01:16:17 ◼   ► what the Apple TV gaming scene becomes,

01:16:19 ◼   ► where it's gonna be a lot of garbage, some good stuff.

01:16:22 ◼   ► It's probably never gonna be the quality

01:16:24 ◼   ► that you'd get out of a AAA studio,

01:16:26 ◼   ► AAA release on a console,

01:16:28 ◼   ► but there's gonna be a lot more stuff,

01:16:31 ◼   ► and it's a lot more casual, and the bar's a lot lower.

01:16:34 ◼   ► And because programming for iOS is easy,

01:16:35 ◼   ► and distribution, despite all of our complaints

01:16:37 ◼   ► in the App Store, is still way easier

01:16:39 ◼   ► than trying to ship a console game.

01:16:41 ◼   ► So I think it's gonna be more like that,

01:16:44 ◼   ► And that isn't necessarily a bad thing,

01:16:46 ◼   ► but it's just different.

01:16:47 ◼   ► This is never going to be a competitive gaming console

01:16:51 ◼   ► in what we think of as a gaming console.

01:16:53 ◼   ► But it might be a thing that people play games on,

01:16:57 ◼   ► if that makes sense.

01:16:59 ◼   ► - Yeah, real-time follow-up.

01:17:00 ◼   ► Apparently Rayman Legends is not on iOS.

01:17:02 ◼   ► It's called Rayman Adventures.

01:17:03 ◼   ► I'm not sure how much it shares,

01:17:04 ◼   ► but Rayman Legends is on PlayStation 3 and 4

01:17:08 ◼   ► and Wii U and 360 and Xbox One and the Vita and Windows,

01:17:11 ◼   ► but not on iOS.

01:17:13 ◼   ► So I have some hope for the people who are good at making iOS games will become good

01:17:20 ◼   ► at making Apple TV games.

01:17:22 ◼   ► I'm really disappointed about the rules surrounding controllers.

01:17:25 ◼   ► I'm disappointed Apple doesn't make a first-party controller.

01:17:27 ◼   ► What you said about third-party controllers is still entirely true with the one possible

01:17:31 ◼   ► exception of controllers made for esports, which cost more and are presumably higher

01:17:37 ◼   ► quality and better feeling.

01:17:39 ◼   ► But the consumer third-party controllers, always gross.

01:17:42 ◼   ► Like even as recently as, I think the last one I actually bought was maybe for the GameCube,

01:17:48 ◼   ► but I always play with them in stores, you would think, "How can it be that much worse?"

01:17:51 ◼   ► Like it's just, it's a pad with buttons, and if you look at pictures of them, you're like,

01:17:54 ◼   ► "Actually, the third-party ones look better."

01:17:56 ◼   ► Like they're better suited to my hands, they're a different shape, I like what they did with

01:18:00 ◼   ► the controls, and then you just press the buttons, and you're like, "What have you guys

01:18:03 ◼   ► done?

01:18:04 ◼   ► What did you do?

01:18:05 ◼   ► It's just a button.

01:18:06 ◼   ► How can you screw it up?

01:18:07 ◼   ► Why does it feel so different or bad?"

01:18:09 ◼   ► Right, like a Super Nintendo controller would feel better than this.

01:18:11 ◼   ► Yeah, and I don't know what magic first-party controllers have or just, you know,

01:18:16 ◼   ► you could say it's just that you're used to the first-party controller.

01:18:19 ◼   ► You get the thing, you use the player one controller for a long time,

01:18:21 ◼   ► then you cheap out and you get a third-party one and it feels different and you don't like it.

01:18:25 ◼   ► But there is no first-party controller with the Apple TV. There's just that silly remote.

01:18:29 ◼   ► So it's not like you're comparing the Nimbus Steelcase thing to Apple's first-party control that feels really good.

01:18:34 ◼   ► You're comparing it to nothing and you still find it doesn't, you know, feel good to your hands.

01:18:38 ◼   ► So I totally believe that I don't know what it is that makes first party controllers so much better

01:18:44 ◼   ► Although I have to say that I'm still you know

01:18:46 ◼   ► I've I've been playing destiny in my ps4 controller for a long time and

01:18:50 ◼   ► The l2 and r2 trigger squeak when I hold them down and it bothers me a little bit

01:18:55 ◼   ► Have I destroyed it by playing 500 hours of destiny? Maybe I don't feel like I'm being that rough on the thing

01:19:01 ◼   ► I just feel like it's not up to Nintendo's quality standard

01:19:03 ◼   ► I guess the GameCube triggers did squeak a little bit too, but compared to the Wii U pro controller

01:19:08 ◼   ► which feels as solid as a rock even though the thumbsticks are in the wrong place.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Anyway, I may be interested enough to buy a real controller for my Apple TV depending

01:19:19 ◼   ► on how much my kids get into playing it and how much I get into playing it, but your view

01:19:25 ◼   ► so far of the Steelcase Nimbus is not making me run out and buy that particular model,

01:19:29 ◼   ► so maybe I'll just wait.

01:19:30 ◼   ► I mean, honestly, I wouldn't expect there to be a lot of these.

01:19:32 ◼   ► I honestly wouldn't.

01:19:33 ◼   ► I don't think the market can really support a lot of them.

01:19:37 ◼   ► I think it can support one to two, really.

01:19:40 ◼   ► And only because, like, if this wasn't sold

01:19:42 ◼   ► in the Apple store, I wouldn't have even considered it.

01:19:45 ◼   ► But I was there to get a second Apple TV

01:19:47 ◼   ► because I wanted one for my desk to develop on

01:19:51 ◼   ► so I can use the nice remote

01:19:53 ◼   ► and not have to use the terrible simulator remote.

01:19:56 ◼   ► So I wanted, so anyway, I was there

01:19:57 ◼   ► and I got one kind of impulse buying.

01:19:59 ◼   ► But if they weren't in the store, I don't think,

01:20:01 ◼   ► I don't think I would have gotten one.

01:20:03 ◼   ► - Apple could be doing the wait and see thing too.

01:20:05 ◼   ► Like hey if people really start making console quality games

01:20:08 ◼   ► There's no reason the Apple can't make a first-party controller and ship it with the next Apple TV other than the fact that it will destroy

01:20:13 ◼   ► You know the poor people who design the packaging they'd be like I have to put this in the box

01:20:18 ◼   ► It destroys my whole box design

01:20:20 ◼   ► It's supposed to be a cute little Apple TV and have this little cubby with the remote and

01:20:23 ◼   ► And the wire and everything fits so neatly and now you got to give me this control

01:20:26 ◼   ► It's bigger that entire box combined. I gotta find someplace to put this

01:20:29 ◼   ► It just seems like a shame like that

01:20:31 ◼   ► part of me thinks is like half the reason they don't want to sell a controller is because it necessarily would have to be so

01:20:36 ◼   ► much larger and

01:20:37 ◼   ► Everything about all their packaging their products is like how small can we make the box?

01:20:40 ◼   ► How many of these can we fit in a shipping container?

01:20:42 ◼   ► How little waste can we make environmentally speaking?

01:20:45 ◼   ► And there's just no getting around the fact that if you want something for adults to hold with two hands

01:20:49 ◼   ► It has to be a certain size and you have to make a bigger box

01:20:52 ◼   ► No, honestly, I think that that is probably a really big part of the reason why they don't make one

01:20:58 ◼   ► They seem to do a lot like I think this is kind of like what I mentioned last week about how I feel like

01:21:04 ◼   ► Johnny Ives influence is slightly too strong in the organization. There used to be some some adjustment there

01:21:10 ◼   ► I feel like the the influence of

01:21:13 ◼   ► Packaging size is so strong right now that they do things like that that like it's optimizing for the size of the box

01:21:22 ◼   ► when it actually has

01:21:25 ◼   ► noticeable ramifications on the product.

01:21:27 ◼   ► So there's some things that they could use,

01:21:29 ◼   ► I think some rebalancing, but regardless, yeah,

01:21:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't expect Apple to make a game controller

01:21:34 ◼   ► that's any good, even if they did make one for themselves,

01:21:36 ◼   ► because for all the same reasons,

01:21:39 ◼   ► everything that is making Apple's products compelling

01:21:43 ◼   ► and good today, hardware wise,

01:21:46 ◼   ► of like making these like thin, sleek things that are,

01:21:49 ◼   ► by the way, did I mention thin?

01:21:50 ◼   ► By the way, it's really thin.

01:21:51 ◼   ► What is required to make a good game controller

01:21:54 ◼   ► goes totally against Apple's hardware design

01:21:58 ◼   ► in recent years.

01:21:59 ◼   ► Like, I don't think they are capable

01:22:01 ◼   ► of shipping one that is good.

01:22:03 ◼   ► They would never get out the door.

01:22:05 ◼   ► - Yeah, because it's the same reason, you know,

01:22:07 ◼   ► the remote is the best example.

01:22:08 ◼   ► If they could make a good controller,

01:22:10 ◼   ► they would have made a good remote.

01:22:11 ◼   ► - Exactly. - It just doesn't,

01:22:13 ◼   ► and I kind of, like, packaging is kind of silly

01:22:15 ◼   ► because there are, like, legit reasons

01:22:16 ◼   ► for the packaging to, you know,

01:22:17 ◼   ► to make a minimal packaging.

01:22:18 ◼   ► Regardless of the size of the product,

01:22:19 ◼   ► you do want to make minimal packaging for economics

01:22:21 ◼   ► and for environmental reasons,

01:22:22 ◼   ► both of which are good to go.

01:22:24 ◼   ► But you just look at the Apple TV

01:22:28 ◼   ► and the size of the remote, and you have to think,

01:22:30 ◼   ► these two were designed as a pair,

01:22:32 ◼   ► and they are in scale with each other.

01:22:34 ◼   ► And it's ignoring the fact that human beings

01:22:36 ◼   ► are not in scale with the Apple TV.

01:22:38 ◼   ► I don't care how big the puck is.

01:22:39 ◼   ► Don't size the remote based on the size of the puck.

01:22:42 ◼   ► Size it based on hands.

01:22:44 ◼   ► Shape it and size it based on hands.

01:22:46 ◼   ► And there's not too many things that Apple makes

01:22:48 ◼   ► that you grip in that way.

01:22:51 ◼   ► Like obviously the phones and the pads and stuff,

01:22:53 ◼   ► they just, they want to be like, you know,

01:22:55 ◼   ► as thin as possible until they're, you know,

01:22:58 ◼   ► until it becomes a non-issue and you're holding like a,

01:23:01 ◼   ► a completely clear piece of Lexan that weighs almost nothing

01:23:04 ◼   ► that magically has an image of here on the screen.

01:23:05 ◼   ► Apple would be all for that, right?

01:23:07 ◼   ► But they make keyboards that you touch

01:23:08 ◼   ► and those they've been trying to shrink down,

01:23:10 ◼   ► but at least the key cap,

01:23:11 ◼   ► key cap is still full size.

01:23:12 ◼   ► They make the sushi mouse, which you touch,

01:23:14 ◼   ► but in a weird way.

01:23:16 ◼   ► And maybe if you hold it that way, it's good.

01:23:17 ◼   ► But if you don't hold it that way, tough luck.

01:23:19 ◼   ► I still like it.

01:23:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, me too.

01:23:20 ◼   ► don't, I mean, it's fine, like if you use it that way,

01:23:22 ◼   ► but they don't make many things that you kind of grip

01:23:26 ◼   ► and hold and use in the same way that you would grip

01:23:28 ◼   ► and hold a remote or a game controller,

01:23:31 ◼   ► because there's nothing on the remote or the game controller

01:23:34 ◼   ► that you look at, the Wii U game pad aside.

01:23:37 ◼   ► It's purely a thing that you hold with buttons on it

01:23:39 ◼   ► that you're not staring at when you use.

01:23:40 ◼   ► So it has to be sort of tactile and you have to be able

01:23:44 ◼   ► to tell which way is what way and where the buttons are.

01:23:48 ◼   ► and yeah, there's not much like that that they make.

01:23:51 ◼   ► And their aesthetic doesn't lend itself well to that

01:23:54 ◼   ► because the negative space formed

01:23:56 ◼   ► by the gripping human hand is ugly.

01:23:59 ◼   ► And there's no getting around that.

01:24:01 ◼   ► - Ergonomics are ugly.

01:24:03 ◼   ► Things that are well designed ergonomically

01:24:04 ◼   ► are not gonna be as visually attractive

01:24:07 ◼   ► as a thin bar of soap remote that they can make,

01:24:11 ◼   ► but it might not work as well.

01:24:13 ◼   ► But they are willing to make that trade-off.

01:24:15 ◼   ► - Specifically things that you grip,

01:24:16 ◼   ► because like grip in this type of way,

01:24:18 ◼   ► because you can make a very ergonomic

01:24:20 ◼   ► and beautiful door handle, right?

01:24:24 ◼   ► Or a lever or shift knob in a car or steering wheel

01:24:29 ◼   ► or anything like that.

01:24:31 ◼   ► Those can be both beautiful and ergonomic,

01:24:33 ◼   ► but once you're wrapping your hand entirely around something

01:24:37 ◼   ► like a controller that you're gripping with two hands

01:24:39 ◼   ► or remote that you're gripping entirely with one hand,

01:24:41 ◼   ► then you're just all around the thing.

01:24:43 ◼   ► And it's like, you can't get around the fact

01:24:44 ◼   ► that hands don't wanna go around a rectangular solid.

01:24:48 ◼   ► They don't want, and it's hard,

01:24:49 ◼   ► if it's a little tiny sliver of a thing,

01:24:51 ◼   ► it's hard to kind of grip that at the same time

01:24:53 ◼   ► as manipulating the top surface.

01:24:54 ◼   ► What are you even holding onto?

01:24:55 ◼   ► The little edges of the thing?

01:24:58 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like the people from OXO

01:25:00 ◼   ► need to parachute into the industrial design headquarters

01:25:03 ◼   ► at Apple and go, "All right, guys, listen.

01:25:05 ◼   ► Everybody on the floor, just strap them to their chairs

01:25:09 ◼   ► and just go over," although OXO discontinued

01:25:12 ◼   ► the good cheese grater too,

01:25:13 ◼   ► so maybe they're losing their way as well.

01:25:15 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:16 ◼   ► - So going back a sec, so I said that there were

01:25:19 ◼   ► two challenges that I see for Apple TV games

01:25:21 ◼   ► and I only named one.

01:25:22 ◼   ► The other big one is, it's what I always say,

01:25:25 ◼   ► never go against the smartphone.

01:25:28 ◼   ► All the Apple TV games so far, again,

01:25:31 ◼   ► I assume this will change, hopefully quickly,

01:25:34 ◼   ► and hopefully to such a degree that this statement

01:25:36 ◼   ► sounds ridiculous in retrospect,

01:25:38 ◼   ► but so far, I haven't seen anything on the Apple TV

01:25:41 ◼   ► game wise that was substantially better than just running that same game on an iPhone or

01:25:48 ◼   ► an iPad. That's going to be a problem for a lot of games. Everyone who's been developing

01:25:53 ◼   ► iOS games so far, mobile games so far, has been doing it on these platforms where certain

01:25:59 ◼   ► things apply, we know all these SDKs and everything. People who are making games that can be played

01:26:05 ◼   ► nicely on a TV with a controller have not really been in this business because this

01:26:09 ◼   ► has not really allowed them to thrive. So we need to either attract those kind of games

01:26:16 ◼   ► into the business or we need to have our game developers start making games that actually

01:26:21 ◼   ► make sense on TVs more than they make sense on just running it on an iPad or an iPhone.

01:26:26 ◼   ► I wouldn't say they're not substantially, but it all depends on how you qualify substantially

01:26:29 ◼   ► because I think even these two games that are totally iOS games like, you know, Altos

01:26:33 ◼   ► Adventure and Crossy Road, both designed with the control scheme of a smartphone or a touchscreen

01:26:39 ◼   ► in mind. Alto is like, "How can I make a fun game with very minimal controls?" Most of

01:26:43 ◼   ► the time you just tap anywhere on the screen. Same thing with Crossy Road. Mostly you just

01:26:47 ◼   ► tap anywhere with a little bit of swipes. They're totally designed for the very limited,

01:26:51 ◼   ► very primitive input, input precision and style of a touchscreen device. But I think

01:26:59 ◼   ► both of those games benefit enormously from being on the TV screen. For the first reason,

01:27:04 ◼   ► that your hands aren't blocking any part of the screen, which is, for console gamers,

01:27:08 ◼   ► of the thing that annoys about iOS games is that if it doesn't have an interface that

01:27:12 ◼   ► totally demands touch like flight control where it's like okay that's not working anywhere

01:27:16 ◼   ► else you know it's got to be a finger or a mouse and the finger kind of makes it more

01:27:20 ◼   ► fun but those type of games I like not having my hand blocking the screen.

01:27:24 ◼   ► The reason I always play Alto on my iPad is I don't like how much of the screen my two

01:27:29 ◼   ► thumbs potentially block when playing Alto on my iPhone 6 or even worse on a 4 inch iOS

01:27:34 ◼   ► device.

01:27:35 ◼   ► seeing the whole screen. Games that look good, and I think Alto does look pretty good, or

01:27:40 ◼   ► even Crossy Road, they look really good on a big TV. Big, bright, beautiful colors, again

01:27:45 ◼   ► none of it blocked by your fingers. I think that is a big enough win that I like. If I

01:27:51 ◼   ► was going for a high score in Crossy Road or Alto, I would now do it on my television.

01:27:56 ◼   ► Like I would not try to do it on my iPad or on my iPhone, because I feel like I would

01:28:01 ◼   ► do better, it's like it's better suited

01:28:03 ◼   ► to even this really super simple kind of game.

01:28:05 ◼   ► It's not like I'm saying, well,

01:28:06 ◼   ► it's a game that takes full advantage of a controller

01:28:08 ◼   ► and you couldn't play it at all on an iOS device.

01:28:12 ◼   ► I think that's a win.

01:28:12 ◼   ► Now, is that a big enough win that people care?

01:28:15 ◼   ► They're like, "Oh, Crossy Road have already got them my phone."

01:28:17 ◼   ► Probably not, because from what I've seen with my kids,

01:28:20 ◼   ► they're fine playing, like, they experienced those games

01:28:23 ◼   ► for the first time on their iOS devices,

01:28:25 ◼   ► they're fine playing them there.

01:28:26 ◼   ► I don't think they would feel the same way I do

01:28:29 ◼   ► about getting my fingers the hell away from the screen

01:28:31 ◼   ► so I can see what's going on.

01:28:33 ◼   ► But we'll see.

01:28:34 ◼   ► My son is now-- he downloaded some first person shooter

01:28:37 ◼   ► for iOS.

01:28:37 ◼   ► And I'm like, oh, what?

01:28:39 ◼   ► For a phone-sized device?

01:28:40 ◼   ► Who in the world is trying to play a first person

01:28:42 ◼   ► shooter on a phone screen?

01:28:43 ◼   ► Well, he's doing it.

01:28:45 ◼   ► He seems to be enjoying it.

01:28:46 ◼   ► It's not like he doesn't know the other experience.

01:28:48 ◼   ► He plays Minecraft on the Mac.

01:28:51 ◼   ► So we've got the mouse and keyboard controls there.

01:28:53 ◼   ► He plays Destiny on the PS4 so he

01:28:56 ◼   ► knows what it's like for console control.

01:28:57 ◼   ► And here he is, tilting the thing

01:28:59 ◼   ► and shoving his little fingers into different parts

01:29:02 ◼   ► of the screen to try and make the guy walk forward

01:29:03 ◼   ► and jump and shoot and I'm like,

01:29:05 ◼   ► oh, that's no way to live, but he seems fine with it.

01:29:07 ◼   ► So you may be right, the market as a whole

01:29:10 ◼   ► is not going to see a significant differentiator

01:29:13 ◼   ► for these same games on the television,

01:29:15 ◼   ► but I certainly do.

01:29:16 ◼   ► So at least maybe for old people who know what it's like

01:29:19 ◼   ► to be able to see the whole screen, there is an upside.

01:29:21 ◼   ► - The other thing too is like TV screens are way worse

01:29:26 ◼   ► than modern smartphone and tablet screens.

01:29:28 ◼   ► the graphics that you see on TV, the resolution, anything involving text, and I totally agree

01:29:33 ◼   ► with Joe Steele on upgrade this past week about how there's so many blurs that use these

01:29:40 ◼   ► gradients between colors and you see noticeable banding on my TV and probably many TVs to

01:29:45 ◼   ► the point where it doesn't seem like this interface was designed for TVs.

01:29:48 ◼   ► You guys gotta get better TVs.

01:29:52 ◼   ► So like in many ways gaming, when you're used to gaming on iOS, gaming on a TV again is

01:30:00 ◼   ► a step down in many ways.

01:30:02 ◼   ► And I totally agree, there are so many kinds of games where a controller with real D-pad

01:30:07 ◼   ► and real buttons or real analog sticks, whatever your case may be, a controller with physical

01:30:12 ◼   ► buttons is so much better than touch controls for so many kinds of games.

01:30:17 ◼   ► Not all, but so many kinds of games.

01:30:20 ◼   ► And yet, playing games on a TV, once you are used to casual gaming on iOS devices, it really

01:30:27 ◼   ► does feel like a big step backwards.

01:30:30 ◼   ► Another type of game, like this is one of the games that was in the top, presented to

01:30:34 ◼   ► me on the first screen of apps and I almost bought it, is a game that I never bought on

01:30:39 ◼   ► iOS because I looked at the game and I'm like, "Oh, well that's a console game.

01:30:42 ◼   ► There's no way I'd want to play that on an iOS device.

01:30:44 ◼   ► What is it called?

01:30:45 ◼   ► Someone in the chat room will tell me.

01:30:46 ◼   ► Oceanhorn or something like that?"

01:30:48 ◼   ► It's a Zelda clone, basically.

01:30:49 ◼   ► It's a, it's Zelda, but not without Zelda IP.

01:30:54 ◼   ► And that's a traditional console game.

01:30:57 ◼   ► Yeah, the chatroom says Oceanhorn.

01:30:59 ◼   ► You run around and you do Zelda-like things with a character who is totally not named

01:31:03 ◼   ► Link, and I assume there's a princess who is not named Zelda.

01:31:06 ◼   ► And beautiful graphics, and it looks nice, but I'm like, I don't want to play that kind

01:31:10 ◼   ► of, again, maybe it's because I'm old, I don't want to play that kind of game on a console,

01:31:15 ◼   ► or on a phone or an iPad.

01:31:18 ◼   ► I want to play that on my television holding a controller, and because I can't do that

01:31:21 ◼   ► I'm never going to buy it.

01:31:22 ◼   ► Now when I saw it come up on my Apple TV screen I'm like, "You know what?

01:31:25 ◼   ► Maybe I would play that."

01:31:28 ◼   ► Maybe it's just, again, the context that I feel like certain types of games that you're

01:31:32 ◼   ► going to spend hours and hours going on a quest and a game with continuity and saves

01:31:36 ◼   ► and adventure and inventory, that I would just rather do that on a television.

01:31:40 ◼   ► I don't know if that's the common case for people who grew up with iOS devices.

01:31:47 ◼   ► I definitely felt that when I saw that icon that same game that I know is a quality game that I've seen lots of things

01:31:51 ◼   ► about that I would never in a million years would buy and play on my

01:31:54 ◼   ► iPad or iPhone I was tempted to buy

01:31:58 ◼   ► on the television I

01:32:01 ◼   ► Just think it also one thing that this would be awesome for that would make my gamepad purchase worthwhile is if good emulators exist

01:32:08 ◼   ► Like for old, you know NES Genesis. We haven't had a good NES or MAME

01:32:12 ◼   ► Breach in the App Store in a while

01:32:16 ◼   ► Yeah, there was that one like there was there was some somebody open-sourced one back when the dev kits first shipped out

01:32:21 ◼   ► And I have a bookmarked somewhere in one of my many tabs in my many Chrome windows John

01:32:26 ◼   ► No, just kidding. I think I'm pinboard somewhere anyway

01:32:30 ◼   ► So I wanted to try to run that because this really could be a really nice

01:32:34 ◼   ► emulator machine but

01:32:37 ◼   ► Getting the software on there through the App Store stuff is probably gonna be a problem

01:32:41 ◼   ► Yeah, I think my last NES emulator probably crashes on launch now in iOS 9 which is kind of a shame

01:32:46 ◼   ► My main one might still run

01:32:48 ◼   ► I don't but in the early days of the App Store for people who weren't around back then very frequently

01:32:52 ◼   ► Someone would manage to get some kind of game emulator onto the App Store briefly before Apple would pull it

01:32:58 ◼   ► So if you purchased and downloaded it during that window of time

01:33:01 ◼   ► Apple wouldn't remove it from your device, even though it's gone from the store

01:33:05 ◼   ► So a lot of us have these emulators from like the iOS 3 or 4 days still sitting around

01:33:10 ◼   ► Of course they're not maintained and the developer can't release updates so eventually a lot

01:33:13 ◼   ► of them just start crashing on launch and don't work, but some of them still do.

01:33:16 ◼   ► >> Real time follow up, thanks to Jelly Bean Soup, which sounds disgusting, in the chat.

01:33:22 ◼   ► I know that--

01:33:23 ◼   ► >> You're one to talk Mike and Ike man.

01:33:24 ◼   ► [ Laughter ]

01:33:25 ◼   ► >> The emulator that I was referring to for Apple TV is called Provenance and so we'll

01:33:30 ◼   ► link that in the show notes.

01:33:32 ◼   ► I will try it.

01:33:33 ◼   ► I have like a DVD R, a DVD, sorry, a DVD Plus R disc with like the entire Nintendo and Genesis

01:33:43 ◼   ► catalogs on it and ROMs, but who knows. I got to take this out. Because yeah, that could

01:33:48 ◼   ► be really cool and that could be like a fun thing to do with my kid who's now like getting

01:33:51 ◼   ► into games, you know, because he's almost four. So yeah, that could be fun. And if that

01:33:58 ◼   ► does work well, then I will not regret the purchase of this controller at all.

01:34:01 ◼   ► So one final thing on Apple TV

01:34:03 ◼   ► And you'll notice if you've seen any of the screenshots the old Apple TV appearance was basically a black background

01:34:10 ◼   ► With light colored things on a lot of the icons were also kind of dark

01:34:14 ◼   ► But anyway, the background of the whole thing was black. I

01:34:17 ◼   ► Like that for a lot of reasons. I don't like bright white screens in my face

01:34:22 ◼   ► but also because I have a plasma television that does not like to show a full white screen and

01:34:28 ◼   ► Also because I have a plasma television with various regions of the screen with

01:34:32 ◼   ► Burn-in and other image retention artifacts on it from the kids watching Cartoon Network and the stupid CN logo burning into the side and

01:34:38 ◼   ► The destiny had burning into the left and so on and so forth

01:34:41 ◼   ► Obviously, this is a problem only for me and the seven other people who still on plasmas

01:34:45 ◼   ► But I bet if you own a plasma and I've heard from a couple people already have done this and you think you don't have

01:34:52 ◼   ► any image retention

01:34:53 ◼   ► launching

01:34:54 ◼   ► something like say

01:34:56 ◼   ► Kratzi wrote and having a big giant uniform

01:34:58 ◼   ► Teal background when the hipster whale comes up you will notice hey, wait a second that big giant teal background is not uniform

01:35:05 ◼   ► I can see the logo of the channel. I watch all the time in the corner

01:35:08 ◼   ► Well, I didn't know that was there before and same thing with the menu screens where it's like you just have this big sea of

01:35:13 ◼   ► Icons on a big it's not pure white but on a big light colored background that's supposed to be uniform

01:35:19 ◼   ► But then you start seeing the little little things burned in that makes me feel sad

01:35:23 ◼   ► I don't think it's a reason for Apple not to do it except the only argument for Apple to go back to a black background

01:35:28 ◼   ► Is just in general staring at a television with the white background is not fun on your eyeballs

01:35:33 ◼   ► Especially if you have if you don't have a plasma you have an LED backlit LCD

01:35:38 ◼   ► Those can go really bright and having a full bright screen even if the room is not dark having a full white screen with icons

01:35:44 ◼   ► On it not great for television

01:35:46 ◼   ► so I wish both for selfish reasons and a few minor practical reasons that they would tone it down a little bit and

01:35:51 ◼   ► and go back to black background with light icons on it instead of the other way around it.

01:35:57 ◼   ► And it also kind of feels more TV-ish. I think Plex's UI is like that. Casey can tell me if I'm wrong.

01:36:01 ◼   ► Well, Plex's UI in general tends to be... I don't know. It is TV-ish, but I've not seen it on the new

01:36:09 ◼   ► Apple TV. I'm not even using new Apple TV yet, so it beats me in that capacity. So you think that it's

01:36:15 ◼   ► conceivable that that would also be a light background with dark text on it instead of

01:36:19 ◼   ► what I'm used to seeing which is black background with light text?

01:36:21 ◼   ► Ah, the pictures I've seen, I thought it looked very much like the home screen of the

01:36:26 ◼   ► Apple TV in that it was like a very gray background with like white-ish text on it.

01:36:31 ◼   ► But yeah, well they're using a lot of the layout templates that you get from TVML.

01:36:35 ◼   ► So it does appear that it's going to be like a general light theme. And I'm with you, John.

01:36:39 ◼   ► Honestly, I didn't realize, like I'd forgotten what this looked like in the event. So like when

01:36:45 ◼   ► When I got it, I plugged it in, I'm like,

01:36:46 ◼   ► "Oh, everything is really bright."

01:36:48 ◼   ► And I also have a plasma, even though it's an ancient one,

01:36:50 ◼   ► but I admit I would prefer a dark theme for TV stuff.

01:36:55 ◼   ► It just kind of feels like that is the color scheme for TV

01:37:01 ◼   ► is black with color where necessary,

01:37:04 ◼   ► rather than what we have with this,

01:37:06 ◼   ► which is just everything is just bright

01:37:08 ◼   ► and full of banded gradients all over the place.

01:37:11 ◼   ► - Well, they do vibrancy too.

01:37:12 ◼   ► That's the thing I actually do think kind of works.

01:37:14 ◼   ► They do a vibrancy effect where like the new app fades to the foreground or sometimes when you're on like a setting screen

01:37:20 ◼   ► You can see behind it this sort of mmm

01:37:22 ◼   ► Like you can't an iOS where they put a sheet up over it and you really can't see through it

01:37:25 ◼   ► But there's kind of these weird colored blobs. It's not straight trans

01:37:25 ◼   ► but there's kind of these weird colored blobs.

01:37:27 ◼   ► It's not straight translucent, it's vibrancy.

01:37:29 ◼   ► Like it's that effect that you've seen everyone else

01:37:30 ◼   ► they do on the television.

01:37:31 ◼   ► And that I don't mind so much

01:37:33 ◼   ► because it does tend to be darker at least,

01:37:36 ◼   ► but it's a thing that it's covering up.

01:37:40 ◼   ► Having a darker gray thing over some icons looks okay,

01:37:42 ◼   ► but when it slides away again and you're like,

01:37:45 ◼   ► light gray icons on light gray or white,

01:37:48 ◼   ► it just doesn't feel right to me.

01:37:51 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, there's different vibrancy modes.

01:37:53 ◼   ► One of them is super light

01:37:55 ◼   ► and one of them is middle, one of them is dark.

01:37:57 ◼   ► So it's really up to developers to choose,

01:37:59 ◼   ► but I think by default, and kind of like the norm

01:38:03 ◼   ► on the platform is going to be things that are fairly light.

01:38:06 ◼   ► And I agree with you, that's probably a mistake.