ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► Happy birthday, Brady Bala.

00:00:02 ◼   ► (electronic beeping)

00:00:04 ◼   ► - First things first, did anyone here buy an Apple TV?

00:00:08 ◼   ► Now Marco, you got a developer unit, is that correct?

00:00:10 ◼   ► - That's correct, and I also bought four more.

00:00:13 ◼   ► - Are you being serious?

00:00:14 ◼   ► - No.

00:00:15 ◼   ► - Oh, I was like, who are you buying them for?

00:00:17 ◼   ► I thought maybe you were like already doing Christmas

00:00:18 ◼   ► shopping, Rene style.

00:00:19 ◼   ► - They're just great stocking stuffers, yeah,

00:00:21 ◼   ► they fit right in there, you just.

00:00:22 ◼   ► - I actually might end up buying roughly that quantity

00:00:24 ◼   ► depending on, you know, how gifting goes this holiday season

00:00:27 ◼   ► but I wanted to at least try it myself first.

00:00:30 ◼   ► Once the general release comes out

00:00:32 ◼   ► and the store opens it up for those apps

00:00:34 ◼   ► and I can actually download the apps to it

00:00:35 ◼   ► and spend meaningful time with them,

00:00:37 ◼   ► then I will judge it as a product.

00:00:39 ◼   ► But right now I just have the developer one.

00:00:43 ◼   ► For the people who are curious in the chat,

00:00:45 ◼   ► the developer one I believe is the 32 gig one.

00:00:47 ◼   ► Even if I were buying a bunch,

00:00:50 ◼   ► even if I were buying one today for myself,

00:00:53 ◼   ► I still might not get the 64

00:00:55 ◼   ► because just like everyone else has said,

00:00:57 ◼   ► I don't think Apple has really shown us

00:01:00 ◼   ► if and why and when we would need the 64 over the 32.

00:01:04 ◼   ► - You think that because you're not looking at the notes,

00:01:05 ◼   ► that's why.

00:01:06 ◼   ► - Okay. (laughing)

00:01:07 ◼   ► Also, I think, I really am not crazy about investing

00:01:12 ◼   ► more money than necessary further in a 1080p setup

00:01:16 ◼   ► when I know in the next few years

00:01:18 ◼   ► I will most likely want a 4K setup.

00:01:21 ◼   ► So I'm guessing I'm gonna be buying another one

00:01:23 ◼   ► of these Apple TVs in a year or two that will support 4K.

00:01:26 ◼   ► So I don't wanna dump a whole bunch of money

00:01:28 ◼   ► into version one before I even know

00:01:30 ◼   ► if I'm gonna use these features.

00:01:31 ◼   ► And I don't see myself installing a bunch of games

00:01:35 ◼   ► or anything, so I don't know.

00:01:37 ◼   ► I'm guessing anything more than 32 would be wasted on me.

00:01:40 ◼   ► - All right, so what's in this follow-up document, John,

00:01:43 ◼   ► that you wanted to talk about with regard to capacities?

00:01:46 ◼   ► - Well, actually, before we get that,

00:01:46 ◼   ► I ordered my Apple TV and I ordered the big one.

00:01:49 ◼   ► - Oh. - And Casey, did you get one?

00:01:51 ◼   ► - No, and I'd like to talk about why,

00:01:54 ◼   ► but let's get through this capacity discussion first.

00:01:56 ◼   ► - Yeah, so this is from Brian Powell,

00:01:58 ◼   ► the first one to point to us, to Apple's website,

00:02:00 ◼   ► where they did actually offer a rationale

00:02:02 ◼   ► for why would you bother buying the 64 or 32.

00:02:05 ◼   ► We talked about this on past shows.

00:02:06 ◼   ► We had theories, Apple's explanation matches

00:02:10 ◼   ► what was our best guess, which is everybody's best guess,

00:02:12 ◼   ► which is if you plan to use your Apple TV,

00:02:14 ◼   ► this is right from Apple's website,

00:02:16 ◼   ► primarily to stream movies, TV shows, and music,

00:02:18 ◼   ► or play a few apps and games,

00:02:19 ◼   ► you'll probably be fine with 32 gigs of storage.

00:02:21 ◼   ► If you plan to download and use lots of apps and games,

00:02:24 ◼   ► choose 64.

00:02:25 ◼   ► So they mention apps and games, mentioning games,

00:02:29 ◼   ► and it may be hinting in the direction

00:02:32 ◼   ► that they're the kind of applications

00:02:34 ◼   ► that are most likely to have large content,

00:02:35 ◼   ► but that's what it comes down to.

00:02:38 ◼   ► Not much of an explanation, but at least it's something.

00:02:41 ◼   ► We talked about how this seemingly makes less sense

00:02:44 ◼   ► when the applications themselves,

00:02:46 ◼   ► the initial download from the store is so limited,

00:02:48 ◼   ► I think it was 200 megs or something.

00:02:50 ◼   ► But the applications can download

00:02:51 ◼   ► whatever the hell they want after that

00:02:53 ◼   ► up to a very large limit.

00:02:54 ◼   ► So you could fill a 32 with a bunch of big games.

00:02:57 ◼   ► Why did I buy the 64?

00:02:59 ◼   ► I don't know, it's pretty cheap.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I just wanna get the big one.

00:03:03 ◼   ► Who knows if I'll ever use that space

00:03:06 ◼   ► or it'll just sit there going unused.

00:03:08 ◼   ► Who knows if the software update in the future

00:03:10 ◼   ► will bump up the minimum size.

00:03:12 ◼   ► Even if it just uses that space to buffer video

00:03:15 ◼   ► so that when my kids wanna watch a movie

00:03:17 ◼   ► that they watched three months ago

00:03:19 ◼   ► that it's still on the thing,

00:03:21 ◼   ► and they've watched like 17 movies and television shows

00:03:23 ◼   ► since then, that's worth it for me.

00:03:24 ◼   ► Basically, if they give me a device with lots of storage

00:03:28 ◼   ► and it's a reasonable price, I'll buy it.

00:03:31 ◼   ► - So as usual, you have rushed to order

00:03:33 ◼   ► the most expensive item on day one.

00:03:36 ◼   ► - Yeah, it was like 200 bucks, like come on.

00:03:38 ◼   ► It's only a little bit more than a Magic Trackpad.

00:03:41 ◼   ► It's a fair point.

00:03:42 ◼   ► - No, I mean, I guess the price difference is so small,

00:03:44 ◼   ► I guess I would probably recommend ordering the big one

00:03:46 ◼   ► if you don't really, you know, if you can spare,

00:03:48 ◼   ► what is it, 50 bucks?

00:03:49 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:03:50 ◼   ► - I wouldn't recommend it necessarily.

00:03:51 ◼   ► In fact, this is one of the cases where I would feel good

00:03:53 ◼   ► about recommending just get the cheapest one,

00:03:55 ◼   ► because it's probably fine.

00:03:56 ◼   ► You know what I mean?

00:03:57 ◼   ► But for me, and since I'm so obsessed with TV stuff,

00:03:59 ◼   ► I just wanna give myself the best chance

00:04:02 ◼   ► of having the best experience.

00:04:04 ◼   ► And it's, you know, I don't really care about it.

00:04:06 ◼   ► So I'm excited to try it.

00:04:07 ◼   ► I'm also excited to move my old Apple TV

00:04:09 ◼   ► up to a different TV in the house,

00:04:11 ◼   ► because it's always kind of been annoying

00:04:13 ◼   ► when you get kids fighting over what they wanna watch on TV

00:04:16 ◼   ► or someone wants to watch this,

00:04:17 ◼   ► or you can only watch that downstairs

00:04:18 ◼   ► because it's on Apple TV and we have no way

00:04:20 ◼   ► to watch anything off of an iTunes DRM-encoded thing

00:04:23 ◼   ► on the upstairs TV.

00:04:24 ◼   ► This will even out our viewing choices once again

00:04:27 ◼   ► so that both TVs are uniform in terms of media access,

00:04:30 ◼   ► and that will bring slightly increased peace

00:04:32 ◼   ► to the household.

00:04:33 ◼   ► - So I did not buy one, and that's partially

00:04:37 ◼   ► because I'm cheap and partially because I get

00:04:41 ◼   ► to be that guy now, and I'm defining that guy

00:04:44 ◼   ► as that guy who whines about the one thing that's gone away that nobody else cares about,

00:04:50 ◼   ► and that's optical output for audio.

00:04:52 ◼   ► So the way we have our home theater set up, which is probably wrong, but I don't care,

00:04:56 ◼   ► it's the way it is today, we have, of course, HDMI coming out of our Apple TV.

00:05:01 ◼   ► I think it's the third gen, whatever the latest one was before this.

00:05:05 ◼   ► We have HDMI coming out, and that goes into our television, and then there is an optical

00:05:11 ◼   ► out from the TV back to the receiver, but especially when you have a little person in

00:05:16 ◼   ► the house who loves looking at screens that are lit up, sometimes it's nice to have the

00:05:22 ◼   ► Apple TV on and playing without the TV on.

00:05:26 ◼   ► And so we also have optical out going from the Apple TV directly into the receiver.

00:05:31 ◼   ► So I can grab the remote, mash on a button a couple of times to wake the thing up, because

00:05:37 ◼   ► it never seems to wake up unless I do that. And then airplay something to it and leave

00:05:42 ◼   ► the TV totally off and everybody's happy. Declan isn't looking at the TV, which makes

00:05:47 ◼   ► me happy and Aaron happy and we're all listening to music, which makes all of us happy and

00:05:51 ◼   ► it's great. And this new one does not have optical audio out and that makes me super

00:05:55 ◼   ► sad. Now, I guarantee that I will cave and eventually buy one, but for now it's not really

00:06:01 ◼   ► filling any need that I currently have. So I'm just going to wait and see how it goes.

00:06:06 ◼   ► I am extremely interested to see how the Plex app

00:06:09 ◼   ► that supposedly is coming out day one, how that is.

00:06:13 ◼   ► And if that gets really good reviews,

00:06:14 ◼   ► that is probably gonna be enough to get me to Cave.

00:06:17 ◼   ► - So does your receiver not have HDMI support?

00:06:19 ◼   ► - No, it does not, it's that old.

00:06:22 ◼   ► - Yeah, well, there's your problem.

00:06:23 ◼   ► - Yeah, and I mean, that's a fair point,

00:06:25 ◼   ► that I could just upgrade the receiver,

00:06:26 ◼   ► but I mean, it's working in every other capacity,

00:06:29 ◼   ► so it seems a little silly to replace it.

00:06:31 ◼   ► - You might as well, like Marco's doing,

00:06:33 ◼   ► you might as well just wait for 4K

00:06:34 ◼   ► to upgrade your receiver at this point?

00:06:36 ◼   ► - I can't tell if you're being snarky or not,

00:06:37 ◼   ► but I'm thinking you're not.

00:06:39 ◼   ► - I'm being truthful, although I think it's gonna be

00:06:41 ◼   ► later than next year.

00:06:42 ◼   ► Next year, I think, still will be early adopter time for 4K,

00:06:45 ◼   ► and you, unlike Marco, are probably better off waiting

00:06:48 ◼   ► until 4K is old hat.

00:06:49 ◼   ► But at this point, I don't know,

00:06:52 ◼   ► it really depends on how much you use that Apple TV

00:06:54 ◼   ► as an audio device interface.

00:06:55 ◼   ► You can get a pretty decent, cheap receiver

00:06:58 ◼   ► that will do everything that your current receiver does

00:06:59 ◼   ► just as well for not too many hundred dollars.

00:07:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, you're probably right,

00:07:03 ◼   ► But, I don't know, I don't-- it's one of those things where because I don't feel like it's necessary and because I don't really--

00:07:11 ◼   ► and that doesn't really rev my engine, so I'm not looking for an excuse to spend that money.

00:07:17 ◼   ► And because of that, I'm just kind of meh about the whole thing.

00:07:20 ◼   ► So what are you gonna do when you get a new one? You're gonna lose this music ability, right?

00:07:24 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know, I mean--

00:07:25 ◼   ► Well, there's probably some kind of, like, $30 mono-priced thing that can split out the optical into its own thing.

00:07:32 ◼   ► There is nothing for $30 that you connect an HDMI cable to that is reliable.

00:07:37 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure in the entire universe.

00:07:39 ◼   ► I remember when I didn't want to buy a receiver, I was just looking for an HDMI switcher to

00:07:43 ◼   ► make up for the fact that televisions now come with an incredibly small number of HDMI

00:07:47 ◼   ► inputs on them.

00:07:48 ◼   ► And my extensive research led me to conclude that there is no such device.

00:07:53 ◼   ► In fact, the best, in terms of the functionality to cost ratio for multiple HDMI inputs, an

00:08:02 ◼   ► entire giant receiver is the best ratio, which is sad but true.

00:08:06 ◼   ► So right seconds after I said that, the ATP TIFSTER in the chat linked to a $28 little

00:08:13 ◼   ► thing on Amazon that does exactly this.

00:08:16 ◼   ► I'm sure it does sometimes.

00:08:18 ◼   ► I'm sure it does that sometimes.

00:08:20 ◼   ► You can also find similar switch boxes for similar prices with similar strange names

00:08:24 ◼   ► and plastic cases, and they all claim to do what they do.

00:08:27 ◼   ► And now let us all scroll down to the reviews and read the comments and see what people

00:08:32 ◼   ► have to say about this thing.

00:08:33 ◼   ► I don't know, it's four stars.

00:08:35 ◼   ► "Splits audio but really lags bad.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Pasture didn't work.

00:08:38 ◼   ► One star.

00:08:39 ◼   ► Verified purchase."

00:08:40 ◼   ► "Quality felt a bit shabby.

00:08:42 ◼   ► Optical out didn't work.

00:08:43 ◼   ► Runs rather hot."

00:08:44 ◼   ► That's concerning.

00:08:45 ◼   ► Oh, this is magnificent.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Like I mean, there is, yeah.

00:08:50 ◼   ► Anyway, some people have good luck with them.

00:08:52 ◼   ► I had to say, with the switching thing, I gathered lots of, you know, experiences from

00:08:56 ◼   ► have them and they're like, "I bought this $15 piece of junk and it's been sitting connected

00:08:59 ◼   ► to my TV for eight years and it works flawlessly."

00:09:02 ◼   ► But you never know.

00:09:04 ◼   ► Maybe you'll get lucky or maybe you'll have to buy seven $15 pieces of junk for it.

00:09:07 ◼   ► So I wanted a known quantity.

00:09:11 ◼   ► As we've talked about with USB hubs, you could get one and it could be a champ for years

00:09:15 ◼   ► and it's great and you spent two bucks for it.

00:09:18 ◼   ► Or you can keep buying $10 ones and they keep breaking and frying and flaking and driving

00:09:23 ◼   ► you crazy and causing bugs that you don't realize are due to your hub until you've tried

00:09:27 ◼   ► to debug it for six months thinking it's a software problem, right?

00:09:31 ◼   ► Stuff like that.

00:09:32 ◼   ► And you're like, where is the Apple of hubs?

00:09:33 ◼   ► Where is the company that makes the expensive, solid, well-built, reliable hubs and doesn't

00:09:39 ◼   ► really exist?

00:09:40 ◼   ► I have some good ones.

00:09:41 ◼   ► I have one of the ones that was recommended to me sitting right now.

00:09:42 ◼   ► I have USB three hubs sitting on my desk that is connected to USB two because that's all

00:09:45 ◼   ► I have, but it seems to be solidly built.

00:09:49 ◼   ► I'm also just use it as a charging station now because that's one of the other benefits

00:09:52 ◼   ► is that it's good for charging stuff.

00:09:54 ◼   ► So I think there are good USB hubs out there,

00:09:56 ◼   ► or better ones anyway,

00:09:57 ◼   ► but I never found anything like that for HDMI switchers.

00:10:01 ◼   ► - Wait, you gotta tell me this USB hub first of all,

00:10:03 ◼   ► and then I have a question.

00:10:04 ◼   ► - I gotta hang on, let me just go lean over my desk

00:10:06 ◼   ► and see what the brand is.

00:10:08 ◼   ► - Amazon seems to recommend the Hutu,

00:10:10 ◼   ► and what's the battery company?

00:10:13 ◼   ► - Yeah, I got nothing.

00:10:14 ◼   ► - Anker.

00:10:15 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's way in the back.

00:10:16 ◼   ► Mine is Hutu, it's black,

00:10:18 ◼   ► and it's got like a rubberized outside on it,

00:10:19 ◼   ► it's plastic, it doesn't get a whole bunch of USB 3 ports on it, and it has been pretty

00:10:24 ◼   ► solid.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I mean, to be fair, the really super crappy, I think it was literally like $7 plastic USB

00:10:31 ◼   ► 2 powered hub that I have here that I bought when I first got my 2008 Mac Pro, also still

00:10:37 ◼   ► very reliable.

00:10:38 ◼   ► But I've had a series of hubs before these two hubs that have not been reliable and that

00:10:42 ◼   ► have caused my computer to wake up and caused me to try to debug sleep/wake things for a

00:10:45 ◼   ► long time and cause all sorts of wonkiness with input and mouse cursor to stop functioning

00:10:50 ◼   ► and yeah so.

00:10:52 ◼   ► Yeah the more I experience various hubs and things the more I just want to buy future

00:10:57 ◼   ► things in Thunderbolt versions even though it's probably a mistake.

00:11:00 ◼   ► And expensive.

00:11:01 ◼   ► Yeah I don't know how great that is although I have to admit that I haven't had any problem

00:11:05 ◼   ► with any firewall peripheral I've ever bought.

00:11:07 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:11:08 ◼   ► You're hoping that it's like the companies making these are have such high enough profit

00:11:11 ◼   ► margins they can actually use reliable hardware but then again I've also never bought a

00:11:15 ◼   ► a FireWire hub.

00:11:16 ◼   ► That I don't think it could exist.

00:11:18 ◼   ► Anyway, FireWire switch.

00:11:19 ◼   ► A place where you plug in multiple FireWire cables because it's not a hub-based network,

00:11:24 ◼   ► but such things like that do exist.

00:11:27 ◼   ► So before we leave the home theater topic, I have a quick question.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Can one of you explain to me what a soundbar is?

00:11:33 ◼   ► I can.

00:11:34 ◼   ► Did this thing exist five years ago?

00:11:36 ◼   ► What is this category?

00:11:38 ◼   ► Is it just a line of speakers?

00:11:40 ◼   ► What makes it different from speakers?

00:11:43 ◼   ► I actually considered getting one of these.

00:11:45 ◼   ► Here's what it's for.

00:11:48 ◼   ► You're trying to have a home theater thing, but you are essentially space or infrastructure

00:11:52 ◼   ► constrained.

00:11:53 ◼   ► So you can't do the 5.1 or 7.1 where you have a center channel left and right and two back

00:11:58 ◼   ► and maybe side channels.

00:11:59 ◼   ► However many channels you have, you just have no way to either place those speakers, no

00:12:03 ◼   ► way to run the cables for them, or your room is just not the right shape or whatever.

00:12:07 ◼   ► But you don't want to use the crappy built-in speakers on your TV, and you also don't want

00:12:11 ◼   ► plain old stereo with a base, you don't want a 2.1, you want something sort of like surround.

00:12:14 ◼   ► So a soundbar is a big long strip of speakers that fixes the space problem by essentially

00:12:22 ◼   ► being a similar, you know, going underneath your TV basically, either directly like where

00:12:26 ◼   ► the stand is so it's low enough profile that it doesn't block any of the screen, or like

00:12:29 ◼   ► in the entertainment center.

00:12:31 ◼   ► It's maybe not as wide as the whole screen, but very long, very wide and low to the, you

00:12:37 ◼   ► know, not very high.

00:12:38 ◼   ► And behind the little shield in front of the speaker are a bunch of speakers of various

00:12:42 ◼   ► sizes pointed in different directions.

00:12:44 ◼   ► And some of them also have some processing and some of them also act as their own little

00:12:47 ◼   ► mini receivers so you can plug things right into them.

00:12:50 ◼   ► And they will do sound processing to try to bounce the sound around the room.

00:12:55 ◼   ► Either do no processing and just shoot the sound out of their speakers or do a little

00:12:58 ◼   ► bit of processing and mess with like delays and stuff to try to simulate a 5.1-ish sound

00:13:05 ◼   ► field by using speakers that are all right in front of you on the TV.

00:13:08 ◼   ► So that's what a sound bar is for.

00:13:09 ◼   ► So it's a compromised thing for people who don't have a lot of space but want to have

00:13:12 ◼   ► better sound than they would if they just used stereo.

00:13:17 ◼   ► Better in terms of getting closer to a real 5.1 surround where things sound like they're

00:13:20 ◼   ► behind you, like in the movies.

00:13:22 ◼   ► And does that actually work better than just having stereo speakers would?

00:13:26 ◼   ► It sounds different than stereo speakers does.

00:13:28 ◼   ► It doesn't, obviously it's never going to actually sound like the speakers are behind

00:13:32 ◼   ► you because they're not behind you, they're in front of you.

00:13:34 ◼   ► But some of them, depending on the room shape and depending on the environment, can do a

00:13:37 ◼   ► surprisingly good job of providing a, I want to say more convincing sound field,

00:13:44 ◼   ► but coming closer to making the sound sound like it's not all coming straight

00:13:48 ◼   ► from the TV. Now is that accurate? Is it what the filmmaker is intended? Is it

00:13:53 ◼   ► even pleasing to you? That all depends on what you think, you know, you can listen

00:13:56 ◼   ► to them in a store and they definitely sound different than stereo. Whether they

00:13:59 ◼   ► sound better or not it's kind of up to you. In the end I decided not to get one

00:14:03 ◼   ► mostly because a lot of them either expect you not to have a receiver or kind of they're

00:14:09 ◼   ► competing with the receiver in terms of functionality of how they work.

00:14:14 ◼   ► And I also eventually found a way to get the speakers around my room.

00:14:17 ◼   ► My speakers are all in the wrong places, but I just did the best I could.

00:14:20 ◼   ► And I figured I'd, you know, I'm going to get a receiver with multi-channel sound support.

00:14:26 ◼   ► I'm going to try to get the actual sound field experience.

00:14:30 ◼   ► And so that's what I want.

00:14:31 ◼   ► you know, sound, and also trying to figure out how to place the soundbar in my setup

00:14:35 ◼   ► was a little bit weird too because I'm not quite sure where we'll go with the television.

00:14:39 ◼   ► Anyway, I decided against it.

00:14:41 ◼   ► I don't think they're entirely crazy.

00:14:43 ◼   ► If you have a small apartment and are into movies and want a little bit of that movie

00:14:46 ◼   ► theater sound and you don't mind whatever the hell the soundbar is doing to try to make

00:14:51 ◼   ► it sound like that, it's reasonable.

00:14:54 ◼   ► You know, even if only just for the center channel where you can crank the center channel

00:14:57 ◼   ► up so you can hear the dialogue better, that kind of bounce you don't get in a stereo setup.

00:15:00 ◼   ► if you just have right and left in a subwoofer.

00:15:02 ◼   ► It's hard just to turn up dialogue,

00:15:04 ◼   ► but in a movie with a 5.1 mix,

00:15:06 ◼   ► the center channel has a dialogue

00:15:07 ◼   ► and you can crank that higher than the rest of them

00:15:09 ◼   ► to help you or other people with low hearing

00:15:12 ◼   ► who are always saying, "What did that person say?"

00:15:14 ◼   ► And you don't wanna turn on the subtitles

00:15:15 ◼   ► 'cause they ruin the picture

00:15:16 ◼   ► and make you read the whole time.

00:15:17 ◼   ► It's a reasonable choice for that.

00:15:18 ◼   ► - Now, I've been looking for a while

00:15:21 ◼   ► and I have not been able to find what I'm looking for.

00:15:22 ◼   ► What I basically want is a dynamics compressor

00:15:26 ◼   ► in a small enough package that it can fit behind my TV

00:15:31 ◼   ► or in my very, very, very narrow TV stand.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Because I would love to have,

00:15:36 ◼   ► just you know, I don't care about your movies

00:15:38 ◼   ► where everyone's talking really quietly

00:15:40 ◼   ► for dramatic effect.

00:15:41 ◼   ► And no, I can't hear what you're saying

00:15:43 ◼   ► and if I turn it up, then it'll blast

00:15:45 ◼   ► and it'll wake everybody up in the house

00:15:46 ◼   ► when somebody like, you know, when a car drives by

00:15:48 ◼   ► or something blows up.

00:15:49 ◼   ► So I would love just dynamic range compression

00:15:52 ◼   ► without having to buy an entire receiver

00:15:54 ◼   ► because my TV stand only has something like

00:15:57 ◼   ► three inches of height for this,

00:16:01 ◼   ► for something I'd be allowed to place there,

00:16:03 ◼   ► and there are literally--

00:16:05 ◼   ► - Allowed by the historical commission

00:16:07 ◼   ► that runs the television stand in your house?

00:16:09 ◼   ► I'm aware of this commission.

00:16:10 ◼   ► - Yes, and there is literally,

00:16:12 ◼   ► I've looked for every receiver, even they have,

00:16:15 ◼   ► there's one, I think it's Marantz,

00:16:17 ◼   ► has like a really slimline one,

00:16:19 ◼   ► but it's like a half inch too tall.

00:16:22 ◼   ► Like, oh, it's terrible.

00:16:24 ◼   ► So what I have now is just like, you know, stereo speakers.

00:16:27 ◼   ► I decided long ago that I think of surround sound

00:16:31 ◼   ► the way most people now, including you, John,

00:16:35 ◼   ► think of 3D movies, which is I just am not,

00:16:38 ◼   ► like I had it for a while.

00:16:39 ◼   ► I had a 5.1 system for a while.

00:16:41 ◼   ► And then as we'd move between different apartments,

00:16:43 ◼   ► I would like set up less and less.

00:16:44 ◼   ► Like first I dropped the rear speakers

00:16:45 ◼   ► and I just had the 3.1 or whatever.

00:16:48 ◼   ► And then eventually I stopped connecting the center speaker

00:16:51 ◼   ► and just had the left and the right

00:16:52 ◼   ► and realized I liked that a lot better

00:16:54 ◼   ► 'cause it was just simpler and, you know,

00:16:55 ◼   ► I didn't care about the surround.

00:16:57 ◼   ► So eventually I guess I've now switched.

00:16:59 ◼   ► But I would still like a receiver

00:17:02 ◼   ► and right now it's just being driven

00:17:03 ◼   ► by this little tiny NuForce amp that has no controls.

00:17:07 ◼   ► But I would love, if anybody knows of,

00:17:09 ◼   ► like just a basic home theater range compressor,

00:17:12 ◼   ► please tell me.

00:17:14 ◼   ► - It pretty much, every receiver,

00:17:16 ◼   ► even the super cheap ones--

00:17:18 ◼   ► - I know!

00:17:19 ◼   ► - Has a name brand, like they go on a bunch of,

00:17:21 ◼   ► under a bunch of name brands.

00:17:22 ◼   ► Some of them might be like Dolby,

00:17:23 ◼   ► where they're like either patent income

00:17:25 ◼   ► or to proprietary or whatever,

00:17:26 ◼   ► but they all have a way to do exactly what you're saying.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I don't think you can buy one without this feature anymore.

00:17:32 ◼   ► - I wanted to echo your sentiment

00:17:34 ◼   ► about the surround sound system.

00:17:36 ◼   ► My parents had gotten me years ago now,

00:17:38 ◼   ► so it's probably ancient by today's standards,

00:17:41 ◼   ► a receiver 5.1 surround combination box

00:17:46 ◼   ► from like Costco or something like that.

00:17:47 ◼   ► It might've even come with a TV and DVD player,

00:17:50 ◼   ► But anyway, that's a receiver we're still using

00:17:52 ◼   ► from probably mid to late 2000s.

00:17:55 ◼   ► And as we moved from apartment to apartment

00:17:57 ◼   ► and eventually to the house,

00:17:59 ◼   ► we also did the same thing and dropped the rear speakers

00:18:02 ◼   ► after like one of those moves.

00:18:03 ◼   ► And so now I am still key,

00:18:05 ◼   ► I've still kept the center channel

00:18:07 ◼   ► and I still have the subwoofer connected,

00:18:09 ◼   ► but I haven't had a rear channel in easily

00:18:13 ◼   ► six or seven years now or something like that.

00:18:14 ◼   ► - You shouldn't do that.

00:18:15 ◼   ► You should either do stereo, which is fine,

00:18:18 ◼   ► or stereo with the subwoofer, which is fine.

00:18:20 ◼   ► But don't do 5.1 and then disconnect some of the channels,

00:18:22 ◼   ► 'cause you're literally missing some of the sound.

00:18:24 ◼   ► Like, in some movies, they can be mixed

00:18:26 ◼   ► such that a line of dialogue only comes

00:18:28 ◼   ► from the back speakers,

00:18:29 ◼   ► and you literally won't hear that line of dialogue.

00:18:31 ◼   ► So please, just use all the speakers

00:18:34 ◼   ► of whatever sound is coming out of your system.

00:18:36 ◼   ► If you're gonna put out sound for two speakers,

00:18:38 ◼   ► use two speakers.

00:18:39 ◼   ► You know, if you're gonna put out sound for five

00:18:41 ◼   ► plus a subwoofer, use five plus a subwoofer.

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00:20:35 ◼   ► - So we have a handful of various links

00:20:38 ◼   ► and things to talk about.

00:20:40 ◼   ► This begins with Tom Bell, who wrote in to tell us that

00:20:43 ◼   ► smaller iMacs came with a 3.5-inch 7,200 RPM drive until

00:20:47 ◼   ► 2012, when the tapered edge began.

00:20:51 ◼   ► Then they changed to a 2.5-inch 5,400 RPM drive with

00:20:54 ◼   ► the Fusion Upsell.

00:20:56 ◼   ► So apparently, that's the history of that.

00:20:58 ◼   ► Moving on, Chloe de Guzman--

00:21:00 ◼   ► I probably butchered that.

00:21:01 ◼   ► I'm so sorry, Chloe--

00:21:03 ◼   ► shares from Tom's hardware data.

00:21:06 ◼   ► On average, in 2.5-inch drives, 5,400 RPM drives

00:21:09 ◼   ► perform just as well as the 7200 RPM drives.

00:21:12 ◼   ► Increasing the spindle speed just increases

00:21:14 ◼   ► power consumption and heat with little to no gain.

00:21:17 ◼   ► 5400 wins overall, which includes power.

00:21:20 ◼   ► So we will put a couple of links

00:21:23 ◼   ► in the show notes about that.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - The caveat I put in there, which includes power,

00:21:27 ◼   ► is in this test in Tom's hardware, it wins overall,

00:21:29 ◼   ► but only, it's kind of like in Car and Driver,

00:21:31 ◼   ► when some car wins overall because of like,

00:21:33 ◼   ► they factor in price, you know, every other stat

00:21:35 ◼   ► that it's not the best car, but because price was a factor

00:21:38 ◼   ► one car is like 30 grand more than the other, it wins, and then people send angry letters.

00:21:41 ◼   ► So the 5400 wins overall because they include power consumption.

00:21:44 ◼   ► Obviously the 5400 is going to boost the scores of the 5400.

00:21:48 ◼   ► So you can take a look at these benchmarks.

00:21:50 ◼   ► The TOMS hardware does break down the benchmarks into the individual benchmarks.

00:21:53 ◼   ► You can say, "What if I care about this?

00:21:54 ◼   ► What if I care about that?"

00:21:55 ◼   ► But the bottom line is that modern 5400 RPM drives with the perpendicular magnetic field,

00:22:01 ◼   ► whatever things in the higher density, are much better than they used to be.

00:22:04 ◼   ► All this is kind of in the weeds and the details, but it's worth pointing out.

00:22:07 ◼   ► Because our main objection is the idea that this thing has no SSD and any spinning drive

00:22:11 ◼   ► is just astronomically slower in random access especially than any SSD because it's got

00:22:16 ◼   ► to spin a little disk and wait for the point to come under the heads and move the little

00:22:20 ◼   ► heads and all that takes a huge amount of time compared to putting signals on different

00:22:24 ◼   ► addressing lines and a bunch of flash chips.

00:22:26 ◼   ► Yeah, this to me, I don't think anybody needs to waste any breath trying to defend

00:22:32 ◼   ► the benefits or drawbacks of particular RPM hard drives

00:22:36 ◼   ► in 2015.

00:22:38 ◼   ► Like, it's just completely irrelevant.

00:22:40 ◼   ► It's if you need a bunch of cheap space,

00:22:43 ◼   ► you get hard drives,

00:22:44 ◼   ► and if you don't need a bunch of cheap space,

00:22:47 ◼   ► you get an SSD, period.

00:22:48 ◼   ► Like, that's it.

00:22:49 ◼   ► - Yep, pretty much.

00:22:51 ◼   ► Why don't you tell us, Jon, about Mac GPUs and noise?

00:22:54 ◼   ► - This is info I've been waiting for on the new 5K.

00:22:56 ◼   ► I maximized now what the GPUs were like.

00:22:58 ◼   ► Is it worth it for me to get the fast one?

00:23:00 ◼   ► What is the heat like?

00:23:01 ◼   ► because the previous one had some problems with the GPU getting really hot and sometimes

00:23:04 ◼   ► throttling down, same with the CPU and the fan noise.

00:23:07 ◼   ► So BareFeets, which is not spelled like you think it does, check the show notes for the

00:23:11 ◼   ► link, did one of their typical tests and their conclusion was that the new top-end GPU is

00:23:16 ◼   ► only a little bit faster than the old one and it gets just about as hot.

00:23:20 ◼   ► They said the old and the new both got to 100 degrees Celsius and the fan was running

00:23:26 ◼   ► really fast in both of them.

00:23:27 ◼   ► and the noise meter look like about the same in both cases.

00:23:31 ◼   ► So no, it's like it's not worse, but it's not better.

00:23:35 ◼   ► And that was kind of depressing.

00:23:39 ◼   ► I mean, it's not bad news,

00:23:40 ◼   ► but it's not really good news either.

00:23:41 ◼   ► But then a couple of people pointed me

00:23:43 ◼   ► to this YouTube video by Max Yuriev,

00:23:45 ◼   ► and he does a whole bunch of tests and has a bunch of stats.

00:23:48 ◼   ► I've never watched any of this guy's videos,

00:23:50 ◼   ► and this one had a small number of views,

00:23:52 ◼   ► but I think everyone can just go look at this video

00:23:53 ◼   ► because I think it's very well done,

00:23:55 ◼   ► and he talks at a nice pace, very clearly.

00:23:58 ◼   ► He's clearly prepared, everything's gonna do.

00:23:59 ◼   ► He's got infographics and everything.

00:24:01 ◼   ► I thought it was really good.

00:24:02 ◼   ► I was impressed by his YouTube video.

00:24:03 ◼   ► Maybe it's because I don't watch enough YouTube videos.

00:24:05 ◼   ► And if he's super famous, I don't know that, sorry,

00:24:06 ◼   ► but this video only had a few thousand views,

00:24:08 ◼   ► so I figured this is not MKBHD.

00:24:10 ◼   ► This is some less known guy.

00:24:12 ◼   ► But anyway, his conclusions were different.

00:24:14 ◼   ► He had more detailed things.

00:24:15 ◼   ► He said, "The overall conclusion was that in the new model,

00:24:19 ◼   ► the fans ramp up earlier than the old model

00:24:21 ◼   ► just to try to keep the temperatures down.

00:24:22 ◼   ► In other words, rather than waiting for things

00:24:23 ◼   ► to get really out of hand temperature wise

00:24:25 ◼   ► and then turning on the fans,

00:24:26 ◼   ► it turns on the fans faster sooner,

00:24:28 ◼   ► which noise wise isn't great,

00:24:30 ◼   ► but temperature wise is good.

00:24:31 ◼   ► In the GPU tests, it seems like the new one

00:24:34 ◼   ► can keep the GPU within whatever Apple sets as the tolerance

00:24:38 ◼   ► like they wanna keep it under a hundred degrees Celsius

00:24:40 ◼   ► or whatever, whatever they set as the limit,

00:24:42 ◼   ► the new 5K iMac according to Max's tests

00:24:45 ◼   ► can keep the GPU within that limit

00:24:47 ◼   ► with the fan going slower.

00:24:49 ◼   ► So in these GPU tests, it's like,

00:24:51 ◼   ► Well, both the GPUs are a similar temperature,

00:24:54 ◼   ► but the RPM on the new model is way lower.

00:24:56 ◼   ► So I like that, especially, you know,

00:24:57 ◼   ► for gaming thumbs up.

00:24:58 ◼   ► And then the CPU tests, the new 5K iMac

00:25:02 ◼   ► didn't do any CPU throttling that I could see.

00:25:04 ◼   ► Like the old one would throw the CPU down

00:25:06 ◼   ► when it got too hot.

00:25:07 ◼   ► The new one didn't, it kept the CPU at lower temperatures.

00:25:09 ◼   ► Sometimes it had slightly higher fan speeds,

00:25:10 ◼   ► mostly because the new model has a higher max speed

00:25:13 ◼   ► for the fan and some stats I threw in here.

00:25:16 ◼   ► After 15 minutes of their CPU testing,

00:25:17 ◼   ► the old iMac had throttled down to 3.3 gigahertz

00:25:20 ◼   ► and it was 100 degrees Celsius,

00:25:21 ◼   ► and the fan was going 2,700 RPM,

00:25:23 ◼   ► and the new iMac was not throttled.

00:25:25 ◼   ► It was at full four gigahertz.

00:25:26 ◼   ► It was 10 degrees cooler at 89 degrees Celsius,

00:25:29 ◼   ► and the fan was going about the same speed, 2650 RPM.

00:25:33 ◼   ► So Max's video made me excited about the new iMac

00:25:37 ◼   ► because it seems to,

00:25:38 ◼   ► basically it seems to keep the inner it's cooler.

00:25:40 ◼   ► And he also did a manual override on the fans and said,

00:25:42 ◼   ► "If you do crank the fans up,

00:25:43 ◼   ► the new iMac can keep both the CPU

00:25:45 ◼   ► and the GPU ridiculously cool."

00:25:47 ◼   ► So really it's just a question of

00:25:48 ◼   ► how much noise are you willing to tolerate

00:25:50 ◼   ► how much temperature you're gonna tolerate.

00:25:51 ◼   ► So I'm feeling better about the iMac than the old one.

00:25:55 ◼   ► As many people pointed out,

00:25:56 ◼   ► we're not gonna get any real substantive improvements

00:25:59 ◼   ► in GPU in particular until they change the process size.

00:26:02 ◼   ► I think this one is also 28 nanometers,

00:26:03 ◼   ► just like Marco's model.

00:26:04 ◼   ► But bottom line, I'm probably gonna get one of these iMacs

00:26:07 ◼   ► and I'm probably gonna get it with the best GPU.

00:26:10 ◼   ► - Also some real-time followup from Kim Allberg in the chat.

00:26:13 ◼   ► It appears as though the new Apple TV

00:26:16 ◼   ► might have built-in dynamic range compression.

00:26:19 ◼   ► - I thought you were gonna say

00:26:19 ◼   ► built-in fan. I'm like, "No!" No, they did. Remember the famous iFixit tear down that

00:26:25 ◼   ► got them kicked out of the App Store? Yeah. Yeah. So we know there's no fan, but it appears

00:26:29 ◼   ► that there might, it might have dynamic range compression built in, so I'm looking forward

00:26:32 ◼   ► to trying that. Is it on by default and you can't turn it off? Because that'll annoy me.

00:26:36 ◼   ► In the screenshot posted here, which looks like it's from one of the videos, or no, it's

00:26:40 ◼   ► from somebody's dev kit, there's an option in the audio menu, like within a movie, like

00:26:44 ◼   ► where there's info, subtitles, and then there's audio, and it says, "Full dynamic range or

00:26:49 ◼   ► Reduce loud sounds.

00:26:51 ◼   ► - That's a nice way of putting it.

00:26:52 ◼   ► I like that rather than branding it

00:26:53 ◼   ► as one of these weird words that every company uses

00:26:56 ◼   ► for their dynamic range compression,

00:26:58 ◼   ► the first option is not great,

00:26:59 ◼   ► but the second option, what people will do,

00:27:02 ◼   ► I'm hoping that its fault is full dynamic range,

00:27:04 ◼   ► and they'll watch a movie

00:27:05 ◼   ► and they won't be able to hear what anyone's saying,

00:27:06 ◼   ► and they'll crank the volume,

00:27:07 ◼   ► then something will explode and they'll be pissed.

00:27:09 ◼   ► Then they'll go to the subtitle manual and they say,

00:27:11 ◼   ► "Yes, reduce loud sounds is exactly what I want,"

00:27:13 ◼   ► and they'll pick it.

00:27:14 ◼   ► So that's some good copywriting.

00:27:16 ◼   ► - They could have called it voice boost,

00:27:18 ◼   ► but I have a trademark. Oh yeah.

00:27:20 ◼   ► All right. Why don't you tell us about the adjustable iMac and monitor stands? I'm assuming

00:27:26 ◼   ► this is John. Yeah, a lot of people wrote in to tell us that they thought we didn't need to

00:27:30 ◼   ► put our monitors on top of anything because we were confused about the correct height of monitors.

00:27:34 ◼   ► I'm not confused. I know the top of the monitor, according to all the ergonomic experts, is

00:27:38 ◼   ► supposed to be roughly aligned with your eye line and everything like that, that you shouldn't be

00:27:42 ◼   ► looking up and all these other things. I know that. Remember, I have a 23-inch monitor, so it

00:27:46 ◼   ► So it has to be on a stand to be up like that high.

00:27:48 ◼   ► And also if you don't have a keyboard tray, getting your keyboard at the right height

00:27:52 ◼   ► means your desk has got to be much lower than you think or your chair has to be higher than

00:27:56 ◼   ► you think.

00:27:57 ◼   ► But anyway, we are aware of the ergonomic, at least I am anyway, I'm assuming Marco is,

00:28:01 ◼   ► the correct height of all the things.

00:28:03 ◼   ► It's better to have options and if it means stacking a bunch of books or a piece of Lucite

00:28:06 ◼   ► or whatever to make your monitor the right height, that's what you should do.

00:28:10 ◼   ► But a lot of people also pointed out that the real solution to all of these "my monitor

00:28:13 ◼   ► is not quite at the right height thing is to either get your Mac monitor or your third-party

00:28:18 ◼   ► monitor or your iMac itself with a VESA mount.

00:28:22 ◼   ► Then you can put it on an ARM or any other kind of adjustable thing that accepts VESA

00:28:25 ◼   ► mounts.

00:28:26 ◼   ► And I believe this is the case and has been the case for a while now.

00:28:29 ◼   ► If you want that, you can't just buy an iMac and say, "Great, well I'm going to take off

00:28:33 ◼   ► this little L-shaped thing and put on a VESA mount."

00:28:35 ◼   ► You have to order it that way from Apple and they will give you the iMac that you can mount

00:28:39 ◼   ► with a VESA mount.

00:28:40 ◼   ► I don't know if that's true of the Thunderbolt displays, but no one should buy them anymore

00:28:42 ◼   ► - Okay, and we have some supposed answers

00:28:47 ◼   ► with regard to the Facebook app usage battery gate thing.

00:28:55 ◼   ► - Yeah, so pretty shortly after we published our episode

00:28:59 ◼   ► last week where I basically said, this is no bug,

00:29:02 ◼   ► this is deliberate, they are jerks about this,

00:29:05 ◼   ► right afterwards, like a half a day afterwards,

00:29:08 ◼   ► they posted a thing on Facebook,

00:29:11 ◼   ► somebody's, I think one of the lead engineers or something,

00:29:15 ◼   ► they posted a thing saying, this was indeed a bug,

00:29:18 ◼   ► here's the bug, and it seemed like it was a couple of bugs,

00:29:21 ◼   ► so they are claiming it was a bug,

00:29:23 ◼   ► I honestly haven't looked into it.

00:29:24 ◼   ► John, do you know, have you looked into this at all?

00:29:27 ◼   ► - All I did was read the press release,

00:29:28 ◼   ► but last week when you were like,

00:29:30 ◼   ► they're doing this on purpose

00:29:31 ◼   ► 'cause they're terrible people and so on and so forth,

00:29:33 ◼   ► I didn't really push back that much on it,

00:29:35 ◼   ► But I find it entirely plausible this could have been a bug.

00:29:39 ◼   ► And the corroborating evidence that I use,

00:29:41 ◼   ► other than my general attempt to have faith in humanity,

00:29:45 ◼   ► and belief that engineers wouldn't do something like this

00:29:47 ◼   ► unless someone made them,

00:29:49 ◼   ► is that some people have said,

00:29:52 ◼   ► now that they mention that,

00:29:54 ◼   ► I've seen that, like where if I have watched a video

00:29:57 ◼   ► in Facebook, then it sucks my battery.

00:29:58 ◼   ► But if I have used Facebook but not watched a video,

00:30:00 ◼   ► it doesn't suck my battery.

00:30:01 ◼   ► So there's some vague anecdotal evidence

00:30:03 ◼   ► that makes me think that their explanation sounds plausible.

00:30:06 ◼   ► But like I said, realistically speaking,

00:30:08 ◼   ► the reason I was struggling last week was like,

00:30:09 ◼   ► why would they even do this?

00:30:10 ◼   ► What is the advantage to Facebook?

00:30:12 ◼   ► It just seemed like a bug to me.

00:30:13 ◼   ► So I am willing to believe that this was a bug.

00:30:17 ◼   ► I do not think that Facebook is actively evil,

00:30:19 ◼   ► unless there's some really good reason

00:30:21 ◼   ► for them to be actively evil,

00:30:22 ◼   ► and I can't really think of a super good reason

00:30:24 ◼   ► to make their app suck everyone's battery down.

00:30:26 ◼   ► Oh, I came up with a few.

00:30:28 ◼   ► I'm also willing to believe

00:30:29 ◼   ► that it still could have been intentional,

00:30:30 ◼   ► but I was never as sure about it as you were,

00:30:33 ◼   ► and given this explanation,

00:30:35 ◼   ► I'm willing to give Facebook the benefit of the doubt

00:30:36 ◼   ► and say that they just had a bug.

00:30:39 ◼   ► - I don't know, I see this both ways,

00:30:41 ◼   ► 'cause I do think they're fairly evil,

00:30:42 ◼   ► but who was it, was it you that said never attribute,

00:30:47 ◼   ► what is the line, never attribute to malice,

00:30:49 ◼   ► what could easily be explained by stupidity

00:30:51 ◼   ► or something like that?

00:30:52 ◼   ► - Yep, John invented that.

00:30:53 ◼   ► - Yeah, if I invented it, I would have quoted it correctly.

00:30:56 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:30:58 ◼   ► - Fair enough, but you were the person

00:30:59 ◼   ► that reminded me of it.

00:31:00 ◼   ► But speaking of John, we have important John-related news.

00:31:05 ◼   ► The long national nightmare is over.

00:31:07 ◼   ► John, can you update us on your Star Wars tickets?

00:31:10 ◼   ► - Yeah, shortly after the show last week

00:31:12 ◼   ► when I was in the midst of struggling

00:31:14 ◼   ► to get Star Wars tickets and being sad about the fact

00:31:16 ◼   ► that my wife had accidentally purchased 3D tickets,

00:31:18 ◼   ► no fear, this is all cured now.

00:31:21 ◼   ► I have gotten rid of my 3D tickets.

00:31:24 ◼   ► All of my Star Wars tickets are now 2D.

00:31:28 ◼   ► I believe all of them are also reserved seating, but maybe one set of them isn't.

00:31:31 ◼   ► And you say, "How many Star Wars tickets do you have?"

00:31:33 ◼   ► Yes, I'm going to see it multiple times.

00:31:35 ◼   ► Those tickets are already bought for the multiple times I'm going to see it with various groups

00:31:39 ◼   ► of people.

00:31:40 ◼   ► So fear not, I will not be watching it in 3D.

00:31:42 ◼   ► I may actually watch it in 3D after I've seen it a few times in 2D, assuming I like it and

00:31:48 ◼   ► I want to see it like a fourth or a fifth or a sixth time.

00:31:50 ◼   ► Maybe I will try it at IMAX.

00:31:51 ◼   ► Why the hell not?

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00:34:01 ◼   ► So Apple had their quarterly earnings, and this was the fourth quarter, is that correct?

00:34:05 ◼   ► Who knows?

00:34:06 ◼   ► Well, whatever. It was a quarter, and they had their quarterly earnings. And I think

00:34:11 ◼   ► Most of it was as expected.

00:34:14 ◼   ► iPads are down fairly significantly.

00:34:17 ◼   ► Sorry, Federico.

00:34:18 ◼   ► Macs are up, which was slightly surprising.

00:34:22 ◼   ► But there are a few things that somebody

00:34:24 ◼   ► who did their homework, whose name is not Casey,

00:34:26 ◼   ► put in the show notes.

00:34:27 ◼   ► I'm assuming it was John, who shouldn't be doing homework.

00:34:29 ◼   ► Somebody has to.

00:34:31 ◼   ► Yeah, right.

00:34:31 ◼   ► China iPhone sales are up 120%.

00:34:34 ◼   ► I don't find that terribly surprising, but that's a lot.

00:34:37 ◼   ► And keep in mind, I think this is because they didn't launch

00:34:39 ◼   ► the 6 in the same quarter in China last year. So this year, they did launch a 6S in China

00:34:44 ◼   ► to be counted in this quarter or something like that. So this isn't all just like, "Hey,

00:34:47 ◼   ► wow, Apple's doing better in China." It's also that they're getting better with simultaneous

00:34:51 ◼   ► launches and that shows up in the thing. But anyway, China, as everyone says, is super

00:34:55 ◼   ► important to Apple, Apple becoming increasingly important, and they're growing fast there.

00:35:01 ◼   ► Yep. And then there's a lot of enterprise-related things that I thought we could spend at least

00:35:06 ◼   ► an hour talking about, Jon. I'm sure Marco won't mind.

00:35:09 ◼   ► at all. How about those new Mac Pros? Oh, God, you're evil. Well played, sir. There

00:35:14 ◼   ► are 30,000 Macs inside of IBM, adding almost 2,000 a week. And IBM is claiming that it

00:35:20 ◼   ► saves them $270 per machine versus a Windows computer due to lower support costs and better

00:35:26 ◼   ► residual values. That's pretty cool stuff. I like that residual value is a factor, which

00:35:32 ◼   ► I wouldn't have thought of because I'm not thinking like a corporate bean counter. But

00:35:36 ◼   ► as most of Mac owners know, Macs do hold their value better than old crappy PCs for whatever

00:35:41 ◼   ► reason.

00:35:42 ◼   ► I mean, just try to buy a used Mac Mini, for example.

00:35:46 ◼   ► And that is a factor in how businesses account for them.

00:35:50 ◼   ► And so the fact that three years after you buy it, it hasn't lost as much of its value

00:35:54 ◼   ► as a Dell is good.

00:35:58 ◼   ► These support things like, boy, I should send these back in time to the 13-year-old version

00:36:03 ◼   ► of me and say someday IBM will publish something saying that having Macs and the corporation

00:36:09 ◼   ► is better because they require less support.

00:36:12 ◼   ► It just boggles my mind that that is actually still true.

00:36:15 ◼   ► Who knows how.

00:36:16 ◼   ► They're our partner with Apple.

00:36:17 ◼   ► Obviously, they're going to say that.

00:36:19 ◼   ► It's like IBM saying the track point is awesome.

00:36:21 ◼   ► You have to take all of this with a grain of salt.

00:36:23 ◼   ► But that was the old story, which was like the old Mac versus PC days.

00:36:26 ◼   ► It's like, yeah, but Macs may be more expensive, but if you buy a Mac, your support costs will

00:36:31 ◼   ► be lower because they're not as crappy as Windows PCs. And it's like, "Oh, you'd like

00:36:34 ◼   ► us to think that, but a computer is a computer." And then they'd have all these stories from

00:36:37 ◼   ► the ProMac people saying, "Oh, we bought Macs and our support costs have gone down." This

00:36:43 ◼   ► is still a story. This story is evergreen. At this point, everyone was like, "Well, everyone

00:36:47 ◼   ► agrees that Windows is exactly the same as OS X." Modern computers don't have all those

00:36:51 ◼   ► weird things they used to have, like IRQ conflicts and DLL hell, and all that's gone now. Everything's

00:36:57 ◼   ► all plug and play and they should be about the same and Macs have problems too.

00:37:01 ◼   ► It's all a wash now and who cares anyway because we're all looking at mobile.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Who cares what the hell is going on in Windows and OS X.

00:37:07 ◼   ► And then here is IBM and I believe they actually are saving money.

00:37:11 ◼   ► Not maybe because Macs are easier to manage or because the Mac users need less help, but

00:37:19 ◼   ► it's like self-selecting.

00:37:20 ◼   ► Anyone who maybe is interested enough to demand a Mac is a Mac nerd who already knows how

00:37:25 ◼   ► to use it and needs less support.

00:37:27 ◼   ► got to be a factor in there somewhere, but I'm also willing to believe, as I always have

00:37:29 ◼   ► been willing to believe because I think it's the truth, that because there's a less variety

00:37:35 ◼   ► of Mac hardware and software, that your support costs can be lower. There's just fewer variables.

00:37:40 ◼   ► People want to think about, it used to be ease of use, Mac versus DOS or whatever, but

00:37:46 ◼   ► the bottom line today I think is there aren't that many Macs in the world and there are

00:37:50 ◼   ► tons of different weird PCs and Windows has to account for all of them and Apple only

00:37:54 ◼   ► has to account for the max that it itself has made.

00:37:58 ◼   ► So good job IBM, and it's a crazy world where IBM is buying 2,000 max per week and has 30,000

00:38:06 ◼   ► already.

00:38:07 ◼   ► That's weird.

00:38:08 ◼   ► I mean, as I think I've mentioned several times in the past, I am the child of an almost

00:38:12 ◼   ► lifelong IBMer.

00:38:14 ◼   ► And I mean, I was never that big into the IBM versus Mac debate.

00:38:19 ◼   ► I mean, I was to some extent back in the day, and I clearly was on the side of IBM, but

00:38:24 ◼   ► man, this is weird.

00:38:27 ◼   ► It's super weird.

00:38:28 ◼   ► Like, my entire childhood was defined by ThinkPads, and to see them basically abandoning their

00:38:34 ◼   ► own product, which yes, I know is Lenovo and has been for a few years, but abandoning that

00:38:39 ◼   ► thing that they came up with to go towards Macs, that's just, man, that's weird.

00:38:45 ◼   ► to quickly address Gareth in the chat room.

00:38:48 ◼   ► I was not forced to use OS/2, I chose to use OS/2 warp.

00:38:52 ◼   ► It was magical.

00:38:54 ◼   ► - Sure.

00:38:55 ◼   ► - It was, it was unbelievably good.

00:38:56 ◼   ► - Yep, and the Hanson CD was a gift, yep.

00:39:00 ◼   ► - No, that was totally me.

00:39:01 ◼   ► So anyway, so speaking of IBM and the enterprise,

00:39:05 ◼   ► Apple says that they have earned $25 billion

00:39:09 ◼   ► in annual revenue in the last 12 months from the enterprise,

00:39:12 ◼   ► which is apparently a little over 10%

00:39:13 ◼   ► of the total revenue for Apple,

00:39:15 ◼   ► and is up 40% year over year.

00:39:18 ◼   ► My goodness.

00:39:20 ◼   ► - Yeah, for a company that isn't interested

00:39:21 ◼   ► in the enterprise, that IBM partnership

00:39:23 ◼   ► seems to be working as intended,

00:39:25 ◼   ► which is like Apple doesn't really wanna deal

00:39:27 ◼   ► with this crap, but they'll gladly partner

00:39:28 ◼   ► with somebody who will do the grunt work

00:39:30 ◼   ► and just make them the money,

00:39:31 ◼   ► and 10% of your business shows that Apple

00:39:34 ◼   ► still is not an enterprise company to the degree

00:39:36 ◼   ► that Oracle or SAP or something is,

00:39:38 ◼   ► or even Microsoft for that matter.

00:39:40 ◼   ► But 40% year over year is big growth,

00:39:42 ◼   ► so apparently their enterprise,

00:39:45 ◼   ► It's like, think about what has Apple done related to the enterprise other than the IBM

00:39:49 ◼   ► deal.

00:39:50 ◼   ► It's not like Apple has suddenly rededicated its entire product efforts on the enterprise.

00:39:53 ◼   ► They're still doing what they've always done to support the enterprise, but I think the

00:39:56 ◼   ► IBM partnership is helping.

00:39:58 ◼   ► Hell, just sales of Macs to IBM itself alone.

00:40:01 ◼   ► Forget about IBM helping other people to buy Macs and recommending them and supporting

00:40:05 ◼   ► them with all their neat iPad apps and stuff like that.

00:40:09 ◼   ► So thumbs up on this partnership.

00:40:11 ◼   ► It seemed like a good idea at the time and still seems like a good idea because I still

00:40:14 ◼   ► do not see any area where like, unlike Microsoft and IBM's partnership, where IBM is cleverly

00:40:21 ◼   ► maneuvering to stab Apple in the back. It just seems like win-win so far.

00:40:25 ◼   ► Yep, I agree. And finally, let's make Federico sad, the iPad. Womp womp.

00:40:33 ◼   ► Is it a really womp womp? Like, I like the, when we all knew the iPad was, you know, if

00:40:37 ◼   ► you look at like the graphs, I forget, I think this was in Jason's "Snell 6 Colors" thing,

00:40:40 ◼   ► we should add that to the show notes, but he had graphs of like the sales of the different

00:40:43 ◼   ► and there are different lines. There's the lines for the phone, which is in one section of the graph and has its own slope and

00:40:49 ◼   ► actually kicks up in recent years. And then there's the sections for the Mac and the iPad. And the Mac and the iPad curves

00:40:54 ◼   ► look like they are siblings. Like, yeah, they're way down here, the volumes are lower,

00:40:58 ◼   ► they're kind of just sad little droopy, you know, they're going up, they're not really going down that much,

00:41:03 ◼   ► maybe the iPad dips a little bit, but they're reasonable.

00:41:05 ◼   ► But the iPhone is in a different category. So if you take the iPhone out of the equation and look like

00:41:10 ◼   ► Benedict Evans tweeted this thing earlier and look at just the curve of

00:41:13 ◼   ► desktop laptops and tablets

00:41:16 ◼   ► If you visualize it in a particular way as he has done here what it basically looks like is that laptops are being replaced by

00:41:22 ◼   ► Tablets so the laptop sales are dipping a little bit and the tablets are continuing the curve you guys looking at that

00:41:28 ◼   ► That's we can photo

00:41:30 ◼   ► That I find pretty convincing and it may be that like

00:41:32 ◼   ► It doesn't change the reality that the iPad is not going to be the next iPhone. We all know that

00:41:38 ◼   ► It could just be you know in the same way that Apple wants to introduce products that can cannibalize its own products that the iPad and

00:41:45 ◼   ► especially the larger the iPads are the future cannibalizers of

00:41:48 ◼   ► Desktop and laptop computers and not going to cannibalize the phone at all because it's untouchable. Yeah, it seems reasonable

00:41:54 ◼   ► That's all how you view the thing like this graph is could be misleading

00:41:58 ◼   ► But it really you look at this graph and like oh totally I see exactly how that's going

00:42:01 ◼   ► But you could visualize the same data in a different way

00:42:03 ◼   ► But I like I gotta get the JSON style in there because I like the one graph that showed how the lines are separate

00:42:08 ◼   ► universes from each other and the other graph that shows

00:42:10 ◼   ► you know and it's not big growth like the

00:42:13 ◼   ► Macs and everything like the growth of that sector of the market is small and then Apple is growing slightly and most other companies selling

00:42:19 ◼   ► Desktop laptops are contracting slightly. So it's all just off as a kind of like I wouldn't call it a hobby yet

00:42:25 ◼   ► But it's yeah, it's a lot of money because everything that Apple does is a lot of money

00:42:29 ◼   ► But the iPhone is just so ridiculous now that you almost have to like have two separate earning calls

00:42:33 ◼   ► Let's talk about the iPhone. Let's talk about everything else in the universe

00:42:35 ◼   ► universe. Yeah, so in summary, Apple has more money than your deity of choice and

00:42:44 ◼   ► it's all stored away in various bank accounts and things are going well. So

00:42:49 ◼   ► I'd like to change tune quite a bit and talk, what do we call this?

00:42:54 ◼   ► Follow-out, is that right? I think so. I'm all confused now. Yeah, which is different

00:42:59 ◼   ► than follow-up. What do you know? We're already into topics. How can you follow out?

00:43:03 ◼   ► is at the end. These variations of follow-up are not officially sanctioned. Not, you know,

00:43:08 ◼   ► like, what is it, like, made for iPhone, MFI? I need to make an official stamp of approval

00:43:13 ◼   ► program for variations on follow-up, and these are not—these are all bootlegs.

00:43:16 ◼   ► Oh my goodness, that's fantastic. So this unofficially sanctioned, or unofficially and

00:43:23 ◼   ► unsanctioned follow-out is with regard to the podcast Upgrade with our friends Mike Hurley and

00:43:32 ◼   ► Jason Snell and

00:43:34 ◼   ► Mike and Jason were talking about on this week's episode

00:43:36 ◼   ► what to do with regard to

00:43:39 ◼   ► large long-term on-premise storage and

00:43:43 ◼   ► Mike had said you know I've heard a lot of people talk about

00:43:47 ◼   ► Whether or not having a NAS is worthwhile, and then if you do get a nasty he's heard you know half of his friends

00:43:55 ◼   ► and say oh you should absolutely without a shadow of a doubt get a drobo and

00:43:59 ◼   ► Then he's heard the other half of his friends say you should absolutely without a shadow of a doubt get a Synology and

00:44:04 ◼   ► He wasn't sure what to do

00:44:06 ◼   ► He doesn't really keen on the idea of network attack storage to begin with then the question is well

00:44:10 ◼   ► Do you not do it network attached? Do you do something more physically attached? Oh my god? What do I do?

00:44:15 ◼   ► Yeah, says Mike and I know we've talked about this a lot in the past, but it's been a long time since we've talked about this

00:44:21 ◼   ► Marco has been almost burned by

00:44:24 ◼   ► some iSCSI software at least 34 times in the last year.

00:44:29 ◼   ► So I thought we'd at least briefly revisit this

00:44:32 ◼   ► and kind of talk about what we recommend

00:44:34 ◼   ► and what our thoughts are.

00:44:35 ◼   ► Marco, do you wanna kind of kick this off?

00:44:37 ◼   ► - Yeah, sure.

00:44:38 ◼   ► So, I mean, so we all, Synology was graceful enough

00:44:41 ◼   ► to give us all Synology units back, I don't know,

00:44:44 ◼   ► what about two years ago?

00:44:44 ◼   ► It was a while ago now.

00:44:45 ◼   ► Year and a half, something like that.

00:44:48 ◼   ► So we all have this, I think the same one, right?

00:44:50 ◼   ► The 1813 Plus.

00:44:51 ◼   ► So we all have the same giant eight base

00:44:54 ◼   ► technology. And this is like, it's no longer their current model, but at the time they

00:44:58 ◼   ► gave it to us, it was a very high-end model. And as far as I know, we've all had great

00:45:04 ◼   ► stories with them. We've all had great success with them. They've proven to be very good.

00:45:08 ◼   ► The problem with NASA's, though, for me, is complexity and backup. Those are what always

00:45:15 ◼   ► get me. NASA's offer a whole bunch of features, because they are just like little computers,

00:45:21 ◼   ► running specialized, usually Linuxes, and there's a lot they can do. You can have

00:45:27 ◼   ► them like you know serve Plex sometimes maybe depending on your transcoding

00:45:31 ◼   ► needs like Casey will probably talk about. You can have them like download

00:45:33 ◼   ► BitTorrent stuff for you. You can have them host cloud files for you when

00:45:37 ◼   ► you're out. There's all sorts of stuff you can do with an ass. I do none of it.

00:45:42 ◼   ► Like I just do not use those features at all. All I really use it for is archival

00:45:48 ◼   ► storage, just long-term bulk file storage,

00:45:51 ◼   ► things I don't usually need to access even.

00:45:54 ◼   ► That is all I use it for.

00:45:56 ◼   ► And so all those features are wasted on me.

00:45:59 ◼   ► And I think that's, honestly, that's probably

00:46:01 ◼   ► what most people really need.

00:46:03 ◼   ► I don't think most people really need to be managing

00:46:05 ◼   ► this whole other mini specialized server in their house.

00:46:08 ◼   ► I think what they really just want is more space

00:46:10 ◼   ► for their computers.

00:46:12 ◼   ► I think that's the main goal here.

00:46:15 ◼   ► And it's great because if you're gonna move

00:46:17 ◼   ► to something like a NAS or even a Drobo,

00:46:20 ◼   ► which I'll get to in a minute,

00:46:22 ◼   ► you gain the ability to use 3.5 inch hard drives

00:46:27 ◼   ► where you can basically spend nothing

00:46:29 ◼   ► and get many terabytes of space.

00:46:32 ◼   ► It is crazy how cheap storage is.

00:46:34 ◼   ► And compared to our world of modern,

00:46:38 ◼   ► at least the decent computers that have SSD storage,

00:46:41 ◼   ► we're fretting over whether to go with the 512

00:46:45 ◼   ► or the terabyte or whatever.

00:46:46 ◼   ► Meanwhile you can get a four terabyte desktop drive

00:46:48 ◼   ► for what, 200 bucks, 150 bucks now?

00:46:50 ◼   ► I mean drives, the desktop drives are so cheap now

00:46:54 ◼   ► and they aren't that fast compared to SSDs

00:46:56 ◼   ► but it doesn't really matter

00:46:57 ◼   ► when you're doing archival storage.

00:46:59 ◼   ► So a NAS is a great way to get a whole bunch

00:47:01 ◼   ► of archival storage somewhere in your house

00:47:04 ◼   ► and if you want, like me, if you want to avoid noise

00:47:07 ◼   ► at your computer, external drives don't really help there

00:47:10 ◼   ► but you can put a NAS anywhere in your house

00:47:12 ◼   ► where you can run a wire.

00:47:14 ◼   ► So that gives you a lot of options there for noise

00:47:17 ◼   ► and location and everything like that.

00:47:19 ◼   ► So there are a lot of benefits to Nasus,

00:47:21 ◼   ► but the complexity of basically managing this little server

00:47:24 ◼   ► in your house has always bothered me a little bit.

00:47:26 ◼   ► And also the question of backups,

00:47:29 ◼   ► my preferred cloud backup is Backblaze,

00:47:31 ◼   ► and I should disclose they've sponsored this show many times.

00:47:34 ◼   ► Although I was using them before they sponsored.

00:47:36 ◼   ► And I like Backblaze a lot.

00:47:38 ◼   ► I have tried Crash Plan before,

00:47:41 ◼   ► and I have had nothing but terrible luck with it.

00:47:43 ◼   ► I've tried running CrashPlan on a Mac,

00:47:47 ◼   ► trying to back up the Synology.

00:47:49 ◼   ► I've tried running the actual client

00:47:51 ◼   ► that can run directly on the Synology.

00:47:53 ◼   ► I've tried running that.

00:47:55 ◼   ► I have tried CrashPlan, I think, at least three times

00:47:59 ◼   ► over the last few years.

00:48:01 ◼   ► And every time it fails, it just slows down to a crawl

00:48:04 ◼   ► and eventually fails.

00:48:06 ◼   ► And people point to various Java heap limits

00:48:09 ◼   ► and stuff like that, and I've tried so many different things

00:48:12 ◼   ► that people have said, oh, just change

00:48:13 ◼   ► configuration setting in this file or whatever.

00:48:15 ◼   ► I've tried so many different things

00:48:16 ◼   ► and it just fails every time.

00:48:18 ◼   ► It seems like it just cannot keep up

00:48:20 ◼   ► with a many terabyte backup with tons of files in it.

00:48:24 ◼   ► So I have had terrible luck with CrashPlan,

00:48:26 ◼   ► but CrashPlan is the only one that will back up

00:48:28 ◼   ► a network drive or will run directly on the Synology.

00:48:32 ◼   ► Whereas Backblaze will only back up locally attached things

00:48:35 ◼   ► from your Mac or PC.

00:48:37 ◼   ► So what I do now, my Synology in the closet,

00:48:42 ◼   ► Two of the disks it uses for Time Machine,

00:48:44 ◼   ► and it uses those normally as its native file system.

00:48:47 ◼   ► All the other ones, it's serving a giant iSCSI volume

00:48:51 ◼   ► that is then mounted on my Mac mini server

00:48:54 ◼   ► using a terrible iSCSI initiator,

00:48:56 ◼   ► 'cause there isn't one built into Mac OS X.

00:48:58 ◼   ► I used the Addo one, but the global SAM one

00:49:02 ◼   ► was worse for me and was less reliable.

00:49:03 ◼   ► So they're both terrible, and those are like $200, right?

00:49:06 ◼   ► So there's more money down the drain there.

00:49:07 ◼   ► And so I use giant iSCSI volume on the Synology

00:49:11 ◼   ► with its crazy RAID setup,

00:49:13 ◼   ► mounted with iSCSI onto the Mac Mini as a local disk.

00:49:17 ◼   ► That fools Backblaze into thinking it's local

00:49:20 ◼   ► because it's iSCSI.

00:49:21 ◼   ► And so then Backblaze backs it up

00:49:23 ◼   ► and it's formatted with HFS+

00:49:25 ◼   ► because it kinda has to be for that to work very well.

00:49:29 ◼   ► So it's this big, complex setup

00:49:31 ◼   ► when really I think I would be perfectly fine these days.

00:49:36 ◼   ► Like I don't need 10 terabytes of storage.

00:49:39 ◼   ► I think I would be fine these days,

00:49:41 ◼   ► honestly, just getting rid of it at some point,

00:49:44 ◼   ► and just getting a few,

00:49:46 ◼   ► either two terabyte laptop drives in little USB enclosures,

00:49:51 ◼   ► little fanless enclosures,

00:49:52 ◼   ► and just tolerating the little amount of noise they make,

00:49:54 ◼   ► or just getting one terabyte SSDs

00:49:58 ◼   ► and putting them in little USB enclosures.

00:50:01 ◼   ► 'Cause a one terabyte SSD is now $300,

00:50:04 ◼   ► and that's only going down over time.

00:50:06 ◼   ► So, like I wouldn't need that many of them.

00:50:08 ◼   ► I don't know, it drives me nuts how complex

00:50:12 ◼   ► my current setup is, and I'm only not changing it right now

00:50:15 ◼   ► because it is currently working,

00:50:18 ◼   ► but as soon as I need to change anything about this setup,

00:50:20 ◼   ► I think I'm gonna dump it entirely.

00:50:21 ◼   ► 'Cause the entire value of a NAS is lost on me,

00:50:25 ◼   ► and I don't need this giant box making all this noise

00:50:29 ◼   ► in my closet all the time. (laughs)

00:50:32 ◼   ► I don't know, but you guys seem like you're better

00:50:33 ◼   ► at it than I am.

00:50:34 ◼   ► - Well, let me just, before I talk about myself,

00:50:37 ◼   ► If you were to do it all over again, what do you think you would do?

00:50:40 ◼   ► You would do something physically connected or you would just, how would you handle the

00:50:45 ◼   ► problem of long-term storage?

00:50:48 ◼   ► I mean, a good NAS is, you know, often near a thousand dollars, sometimes more if you

00:50:53 ◼   ► need, like, you know, the 8 bay version.

00:50:57 ◼   ► For the same price or less, I think I would probably just do what I said, just like, you

00:51:01 ◼   ► know, get like three or four one terabyte SSDs, try to find an enclosure that could,

00:51:07 ◼   ► that can run fanless and can hold all of them.

00:51:10 ◼   ► It probably doesn't exist.

00:51:11 ◼   ► I haven't, Tiff has on her computer,

00:51:14 ◼   ► she has a similar kind of setup like this

00:51:15 ◼   ► with the OWC Thunder Bay Mini 4, something like that.

00:51:19 ◼   ► It's the one that takes two and a half inch drives.

00:51:21 ◼   ► And that one does not run fanless.

00:51:23 ◼   ► I mentioned in a previous show,

00:51:24 ◼   ► I replaced the fan in it for a quieter one,

00:51:27 ◼   ► but it still has noticeable fan noise.

00:51:29 ◼   ► And the reason why is not because the disc run hot,

00:51:31 ◼   ► but because it has this Thunderbolt chip on it,

00:51:34 ◼   ► like this controller chip,

00:51:35 ◼   ► that runs incredibly hot to the touch.

00:51:37 ◼   ► if you don't fan it.

00:51:39 ◼   ► And there's no heat sink, it's just a bare chip,

00:51:41 ◼   ► and it just runs insanely hot, I have no idea why.

00:51:44 ◼   ► Like even when the drives are idle, it's just crazy.

00:51:45 ◼   ► Anyway, so what I would do now

00:51:49 ◼   ► is probably buy external drives,

00:51:52 ◼   ► and even if I spent the money to make them all little SSDs

00:51:56 ◼   ► so that they would be totally silent,

00:51:58 ◼   ► that would probably be cheaper than a NAS,

00:52:00 ◼   ► and it wouldn't be nearly as much space,

00:52:03 ◼   ► but I would argue I probably don't need that much space,

00:52:05 ◼   ► 'cause my NAS has literally had 10 terabytes free

00:52:07 ◼   ► for the last few months.

00:52:11 ◼   ► - I totally sympathize with what you're saying,

00:52:14 ◼   ► but I don't have the same complaints

00:52:17 ◼   ► that you do as you expected.

00:52:18 ◼   ► I have, of course, the same DS-1813+ that you do.

00:52:23 ◼   ► From what I can tell with Synology model names,

00:52:26 ◼   ► the 8 in 1813 means it's 8-Bay,

00:52:30 ◼   ► and 13 means it's the 2013 model.

00:52:33 ◼   ► So the modern version of what we have is the DS1815+.

00:52:38 ◼   ► - Oh, that's why they skipped the 14.

00:52:40 ◼   ► - Yeah, I didn't realize that was a thing

00:52:41 ◼   ► until somebody pointed that out on Twitter.

00:52:43 ◼   ► I wish I remember who it was, and I was like,

00:52:45 ◼   ► whoa, mind blown, had no idea.

00:52:47 ◼   ► So anyway, so the DS1815+ is the modern version,

00:52:51 ◼   ► but I freaking love my Synology.

00:52:55 ◼   ► As Marco said, it was comped.

00:52:57 ◼   ► It was comped not only the box, but all the drives in it.

00:53:00 ◼   ► We have eight 3 gig, or 3 terabyte, excuse me,

00:53:04 ◼   ► hard drives in these.

00:53:05 ◼   ► I love this thing.

00:53:08 ◼   ► It has its own, I'm gonna call it operating system,

00:53:12 ◼   ► although that's a misnomer.

00:53:13 ◼   ► It has its own web interface, let's use that.

00:53:15 ◼   ► It has its own web interface, as many NASA's do.

00:53:19 ◼   ► And it lets you do all sorts of things on it.

00:53:22 ◼   ► I use mine as a VPN server all the time,

00:53:25 ◼   ► particularly lately since I've been working

00:53:26 ◼   ► out of a client's office.

00:53:28 ◼   ► And for my Mac, I like to be on a VPN

00:53:32 ◼   ► and I might as well be on my own.

00:53:34 ◼   ► It has BitTorrent client, if that's your thing.

00:53:37 ◼   ► It has a news group client, if that's your thing.

00:53:40 ◼   ► It has really great file sharing.

00:53:43 ◼   ► So if you have a stupidly large file

00:53:46 ◼   ► that you wanna send to somebody

00:53:47 ◼   ► and maybe you don't wanna use,

00:53:49 ◼   ► what's the Apple thing that just came out in the last year?

00:53:52 ◼   ► - The Apple watch.

00:53:53 ◼   ► - Funny, no, I meant the thing

00:53:54 ◼   ► where that lets you send huge files.

00:53:56 ◼   ► iCloud sharing or something?

00:53:57 ◼   ► No, no, no, that's not right.

00:53:58 ◼   ► Does that actually work?

00:53:59 ◼   ► I've never actually seen it.

00:54:00 ◼   ► I've never tried it.

00:54:01 ◼   ► Mail bagging, oh.

00:54:04 ◼   ► I've used it.

00:54:05 ◼   ► That wasn't this year.

00:54:06 ◼   ► That was the year...

00:54:07 ◼   ► My last review had that, so that must have been in Yosemite.

00:54:10 ◼   ► But yeah, I've used it.

00:54:11 ◼   ► It's a nice way to not...

00:54:13 ◼   ► If you use the Apple Mail app, obviously.

00:54:15 ◼   ► Or I think the web interface, you can send an attachment without regard to how big the

00:54:21 ◼   ► attachment is, because it automatically uploads it to a cloud server.

00:54:23 ◼   ► It basically does the same thing as Cloud Apple, one of those things does, but automatically

00:54:26 ◼   ► with no ads and for free.

00:54:28 ◼   ► It's something drop as per the chat room, perhaps mail drop.

00:54:32 ◼   ► In any case, so if you don't want to mail drop, you can use your Synology to do that.

00:54:37 ◼   ► None of these things are unique to the Synology.

00:54:39 ◼   ► Oh, it'll also be a Plex server, although my model, the 1813+, did not have a strong

00:54:45 ◼   ► enough CPU for doing live transcoding.

00:54:48 ◼   ► And we've talked about this in the past, I'm not going to go on about it, but suffice to

00:54:51 ◼   ► say it didn't work well for me.

00:54:53 ◼   ► But what does work well for me is having my personal Mac, which is effectively a desktop

00:54:59 ◼   ► server, even though it's actually a 15-inch high-res anti-glare, that's the Plex server,

00:55:04 ◼   ► and I just have it look at the Synology to get all its media.

00:55:08 ◼   ► And so it just, it's wonderful having a server in the house if you're at all geeky.

00:55:15 ◼   ► A network-attached storage does not need to be that server.

00:55:18 ◼   ► You would probably, perhaps, be better off with a Mac Mini if you can afford or have

00:55:22 ◼   ► such a thing, or if you have, say, a 5K Retina iMac and you just want to leave it on constantly,

00:55:27 ◼   ► that would also probably work just as well if not better.

00:55:30 ◼   ► But for me, I just really like having some sort of box that's kind of a server that I

00:55:35 ◼   ► can offload those weird tasks, like if I do want to download a torrent of some legal software,

00:55:42 ◼   ► or some, you know, open a free movie or what have you.

00:55:45 ◼   ► You know, I can offload that onto the Synology.

00:55:47 ◼   ► If I want to share files with friends or family, it makes it very easy.

00:55:50 ◼   ► And the other thing that I love more than anything else is that because I have six of

00:55:57 ◼   ► the eight drives in Synology Hybrid RAID, which is one drive redundancy, so one of these

00:56:02 ◼   ► drives can explode and I'll be okay.

00:56:04 ◼   ► Which is insanely slow.

00:56:06 ◼   ► Is it?

00:56:07 ◼   ► I don't notice.

00:56:08 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

00:56:09 ◼   ► Well it's like any of those like RAID 5-y kind of things.

00:56:10 ◼   ► I mean, true RAID 5 is also very slow because I believe it has to write every block to every

00:56:15 ◼   ► disk.

00:56:16 ◼   ► So, yeah, very slow on writes and okay on reads.

00:56:19 ◼   ► Nobody uses RAID 5 for performance.

00:56:21 ◼   ► And then so there's Synology Hybrid RAID

00:56:23 ◼   ► is very similar to what people know Drobo is to do.

00:56:25 ◼   ► Which, and we'll talk about those I guess.

00:56:27 ◼   ► So, you know, which is basically you have

00:56:29 ◼   ► like a kind of software managed volume

00:56:32 ◼   ► where it kind of manages the whole file system for you

00:56:34 ◼   ► 'cause it kind of has to resize itself.

00:56:37 ◼   ► So that way you can use an array of disks

00:56:40 ◼   ► of different sizes and then you can actually expand

00:56:43 ◼   ► the volume by replacing disks one at a time.

00:56:47 ◼   ► So it's a cool setup if you have expanding needs over time, but you do pay a penalty

00:56:53 ◼   ► in performance for sure.

00:56:55 ◼   ► And with some of them, like Drobo, there's a question of reliability.

00:56:59 ◼   ► Drobo in particular has had a pretty spotty reliability history, which is why I've never

00:57:05 ◼   ► ventured into that area myself, because if you ask Drobo owners, many of the ones you

00:57:10 ◼   ► talk to have been fine.

00:57:12 ◼   ► They've had no problems whatsoever.

00:57:13 ◼   ► It's been rock solid for them.

00:57:14 ◼   ► However, you will hear a lot of people telling you all their horror stories from Drobos.

00:57:20 ◼   ► And so it just never… and the reviews kind of back this up.

00:57:23 ◼   ► If you look on like Amazon or whatever or read tech sites, like it really does seem

00:57:26 ◼   ► like they have a spotty history of liability and that's why I would not, I don't think,

00:57:33 ◼   ► want to try one.

00:57:34 ◼   ► But I don't know.

00:57:35 ◼   ► You know, you never say never in this business.

00:57:36 ◼   ► All right.

00:57:37 ◼   ► So anyway, so yeah, to wrap it up, I love having some sort of server-like thing on the

00:57:43 ◼   ► network in the house. And I really love my Synology. And yes, I got this for free. If

00:57:50 ◼   ► I were to have paid for it, it would have been over $1,000 with all the drives in it,

00:57:54 ◼   ► which is absurdly expensive. But they have other versions. Like I think they have a 1515

00:58:01 ◼   ► this year, which would be a 5 bay version. There's two bay versions. So whatever you

00:58:07 ◼   ► think is right for you, get that if you can. Be a Drobo-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-O-

00:58:37 ◼   ► I don't want to take up that much space now don't care whatever it is. I'll take it. I got plenty of room and that is

00:58:43 ◼   ► Magical so I've gone on Marcos going on John. What's your take on all this? Well getting back to the

00:58:50 ◼   ► Kick us off with Mike and his questions

00:58:53 ◼   ► At this point despite what all of us have said or what you two have said of what I'm going to say and have said

00:58:59 ◼   ► In the past about our particular setups what this comes down to is one of those conversations that used to be more common

00:59:04 ◼   ► surrounding things like computers

00:59:07 ◼   ► or even smart phones a little bit, but mostly computers, where if you're known as like the

00:59:11 ◼   ► computer guy or gal in your family or in your town or in your group of friends or whatever,

00:59:17 ◼   ► you get questions from people who say, "If someone knows stuff about cars, what car should

00:59:21 ◼   ► I buy?

00:59:22 ◼   ► What computer should I get?

00:59:24 ◼   ► How should I configure the computer?"

00:59:26 ◼   ► Computer questions like this.

00:59:27 ◼   ► And I'm sure each of us has been the resident tech nerd many times to many people, and in

00:59:33 ◼   ► In most cases, you have to turn it into an interview,

00:59:36 ◼   ► where you have to say, all right, well,

00:59:38 ◼   ► what do you actually want to do?

00:59:39 ◼   ► What is your budget?

00:59:40 ◼   ► What are your needs?

00:59:41 ◼   ► What's important to you?

00:59:42 ◼   ► And then you can recommend something.

00:59:43 ◼   ► You can tell them what the trade-offs are,

00:59:45 ◼   ► which may make them change their minds about,

00:59:47 ◼   ► oh, I didn't realize that,

00:59:49 ◼   ► and now I'm gonna prioritize this or that.

00:59:51 ◼   ► I didn't realize how much that costs

00:59:52 ◼   ► or how cheaply I could do this or whatever.

00:59:53 ◼   ► But in the bottom, it's like a back and forth

00:59:54 ◼   ► where like, okay, well,

00:59:56 ◼   ► if you don't want to use any sort of,

00:59:59 ◼   ► if you don't need a home server,

01:00:00 ◼   ► you don't want to manage another thing,

01:00:01 ◼   ► you just want it to be a dumb box disk,

01:00:03 ◼   ► but you do need a backup,

01:00:04 ◼   ► or do you subscribe to a cloud backup service?

01:00:06 ◼   ► Do you not want to subscribe to one?

01:00:08 ◼   ► What kind of backup things do you know?

01:00:09 ◼   ► It turns into this big, long, complicated interview

01:00:11 ◼   ► where I think all of us, if anyone asked,

01:00:13 ◼   ► could lead them to the optimal solution for them.

01:00:16 ◼   ► There is no optimal solution for everybody.

01:00:17 ◼   ► It just really depends on what you want.

01:00:20 ◼   ► And thinking about that and Mike and his questions,

01:00:23 ◼   ► like, I think we could all do that for him

01:00:24 ◼   ► and kind of have a little bit in the Slack

01:00:26 ◼   ► where we all hang out.

01:00:27 ◼   ► But the fact that you have to have that conversation

01:00:32 ◼   ► And the fact that you need all this expertise and experience

01:00:35 ◼   ► to guide in the right direction shows

01:00:37 ◼   ► that this is sort of an unsolved problem.

01:00:39 ◼   ► That it's annoying that you have to-- and this also

01:00:40 ◼   ► came up in the Slack-- that it's annoying that you have

01:00:43 ◼   ► to do all this, have these expertise,

01:00:46 ◼   ► and sort of cobble together these systems.

01:00:48 ◼   ► Like that it's not something-- you have to think about it.

01:00:50 ◼   ► It's much better than it used to be.

01:00:52 ◼   ► I mean, and again, I believe I said in one of my old OS X

01:00:54 ◼   ► reviews that Time Machine was the best feature Apple ever

01:00:56 ◼   ► added to an operating system because prior to Time Machine,

01:00:59 ◼   ► getting anyone to do backups ever was just not happening.

01:01:02 ◼   ► And Time Machine didn't make it so easy

01:01:05 ◼   ► that everybody does it,

01:01:06 ◼   ► but boy did it lower the barrier to entry,

01:01:08 ◼   ► massively lowered it.

01:01:09 ◼   ► And still there is a massive barrier yet to go

01:01:11 ◼   ► because it's like, okay, they made it so much easier.

01:01:13 ◼   ► Great, that was great from 10.5, right?

01:01:15 ◼   ► But then you gotta buy an external hard drive

01:01:17 ◼   ► and how do I attach it?

01:01:18 ◼   ► Is it USB or is it Firewire?

01:01:19 ◼   ► Do I back up to a NAS?

01:01:20 ◼   ► Can you do Time Machine over the network?

01:01:22 ◼   ► Are the time capsules flaky?

01:01:24 ◼   ► Can I do Time Machine to a third party thing,

01:01:25 ◼   ► like a Synology?

01:01:27 ◼   ► Like it is still, backups in general

01:01:30 ◼   ► are still way, way too hard.

01:01:32 ◼   ► And lots of people think like this will be solved

01:01:36 ◼   ► when everything is network backup.

01:01:38 ◼   ► Well, in this country anyway,

01:01:40 ◼   ► if we are all waiting around for everyone

01:01:42 ◼   ► to get network connections fast enough

01:01:43 ◼   ► to back up the amount of data that they produce

01:01:46 ◼   ► and store on their computers,

01:01:49 ◼   ► we're all gonna be dead by then.

01:01:51 ◼   ► Like other countries may have better network infrastructure,

01:01:55 ◼   ► outlooks for the next 50 to 100 years,

01:01:58 ◼   ► the United States does not have very good outlook.

01:02:00 ◼   ► So I think it's kind of a shame

01:02:03 ◼   ► that this is still not a solved problem.

01:02:05 ◼   ► And Apple for the most part has punted on it.

01:02:08 ◼   ► They did a time capsule, which I wish worked better

01:02:11 ◼   ► than it did because it seemed like the ideal solution.

01:02:14 ◼   ► Maybe when they get time capsule,

01:02:17 ◼   ► when they rededicate themselves to time capsule

01:02:19 ◼   ► with their new OS that's coming out any day now, I'm sure.

01:02:21 ◼   ► Not new OS, new file system.

01:02:23 ◼   ► new file system with data integrity protection

01:02:26 ◼   ► that can efficiently send diffs and I don't know.

01:02:28 ◼   ► You can imagine a scenario where time capsule starts

01:02:31 ◼   ► to become a much better solution than it is.

01:02:32 ◼   ► But today we're all talking about buying enclosures

01:02:36 ◼   ► and sticking bare drives in it and Marco's like,

01:02:38 ◼   ► well, I'm gonna buy some SSDs and find out things

01:02:40 ◼   ► but like nobody is gonna do that.

01:02:42 ◼   ► It's just too darn hard.

01:02:43 ◼   ► So I think the take home from this is

01:02:46 ◼   ► there's probably a, if you're listening to this,

01:02:48 ◼   ► there is probably a solution that fits your needs

01:02:50 ◼   ► to back up what you want.

01:02:52 ◼   ► We don't know what it is

01:02:53 ◼   ► because we don't know what your needs are.

01:02:54 ◼   ► And in general, this is way too hard.

01:02:56 ◼   ► Like this should not,

01:02:57 ◼   ► this is one of the last remaining bastions

01:02:59 ◼   ► of computers are annoying and difficult to manage

01:03:02 ◼   ► and problematic and there's no easy good choice

01:03:06 ◼   ► that I can recommend to everybody, you know?

01:03:09 ◼   ► - Yeah, and it's really unfortunate

01:03:10 ◼   ► because you're right,

01:03:11 ◼   ► this is way too complicated for people.

01:03:12 ◼   ► This is one of the reasons

01:03:13 ◼   ► why people have often no backups

01:03:16 ◼   ► because, you know, like so many people,

01:03:19 ◼   ► I'm sure we've all seen people like this,

01:03:20 ◼   ► where they will have an external drive enclosure

01:03:24 ◼   ► on their desk that they call their backup drive.

01:03:27 ◼   ► But it actually isn't the backup, it is just more space.

01:03:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, or they time machine to it,

01:03:31 ◼   ► but you ever see the message that says

01:03:33 ◼   ► time machine does not back up in 10 days, right?

01:03:35 ◼   ► - Oh yeah. - Time machine does

01:03:36 ◼   ► at least tell you that, because I think a lot of people

01:03:38 ◼   ► think they're running time machine,

01:03:39 ◼   ► but they're not 'cause it's so unobtrusive.

01:03:41 ◼   ► And if they get that message, I can imagine them

01:03:43 ◼   ► dismissing it and going, oh, I'm sure that'll fix itself.

01:03:45 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:03:46 ◼   ► This is why one of my very early,

01:03:48 ◼   ► when I started my, what was then called the FatPits blog

01:03:51 ◼   ► at Ars Technica, one of the various horse articles I wrote,

01:03:54 ◼   ► I think it was called the case for raid

01:03:55 ◼   ► or something like that, where I was just desperately looking

01:03:57 ◼   ► for some way to actually, to keep climbing up

01:04:01 ◼   ► that stupid back uphill, like time machine, great,

01:04:03 ◼   ► thumbs up or whatever, I don't even know

01:04:04 ◼   ► if time machine was out by then.

01:04:06 ◼   ► But it's like, it's too hard for people to back up.

01:04:08 ◼   ► Like even with time machine, I have to,

01:04:11 ◼   ► my own battles to convince my relatives

01:04:13 ◼   ► to buy an external hard drive, try convincing someone

01:04:15 ◼   ► they have to spend any amount of money

01:04:16 ◼   ► to get a box with wires that connects to the big expensive computer they just bought. They're

01:04:20 ◼   ► like, "Why do I need this?" It's like if someone gets a TV and says, "Well, you've got the

01:04:25 ◼   ► cable box, I guess, so that's not a good example." But anyway, people don't want to do it. They

01:04:28 ◼   ► don't want to buy an extra thing and then they have to, you know, the power supply and

01:04:32 ◼   ► it dies or it makes noise and they don't need to be turned on and off. They don't understand

01:04:35 ◼   ► disk mounting and unmounting because it's complicated.

01:04:38 ◼   ► What I was looking for for Apple, which is, you know, the old Apple, is like, "Can you

01:04:41 ◼   ► just build in twice the storage in every single computer? Like, sell computers that say they

01:04:45 ◼   ► they have X amount of storage,

01:04:46 ◼   ► but really have them always have 2X

01:04:48 ◼   ► and have them essentially do,

01:04:50 ◼   ► I think, again, I think it was pre-time machine,

01:04:52 ◼   ► have them essentially do incremental backups

01:04:54 ◼   ► from one drive to the other, right?

01:04:56 ◼   ► I mean, they kind of did this recovery partition,

01:04:58 ◼   ► saving the OS, but that doesn't save your data at all.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And it's all in the same mechanism.

01:05:01 ◼   ► What I basically wanted was, I mean, again,

01:05:03 ◼   ► phrasing it as RAID, it's not really RAID,

01:05:05 ◼   ► although RAID 1 would still be better than nothing,

01:05:06 ◼   ► even though it's not a backup,

01:05:08 ◼   ► but the premise was that the only way

01:05:11 ◼   ► you're ever gonna get people to back up

01:05:12 ◼   ► is to just lie to them and just over-provision

01:05:14 ◼   ► and give them twice the storage they have

01:05:16 ◼   ► and pretend they have half that storage

01:05:18 ◼   ► and just do incremental backups for them,

01:05:19 ◼   ► no choice of every single,

01:05:21 ◼   ► because that's what people want.

01:05:22 ◼   ► They just want a computer, you plunk it down like a phone.

01:05:25 ◼   ► They want a phone, you wanna plunk it down.

01:05:26 ◼   ► Phones so far have been able to get by

01:05:29 ◼   ► on the fact that the data does not accumulate on phones

01:05:33 ◼   ► fast enough to make it impossible to do a cloud backup.

01:05:35 ◼   ► And so with the cloud backup,

01:05:37 ◼   ► again, setting aside the pricing stuff,

01:05:38 ◼   ► I think phone backups are in a better state

01:05:41 ◼   ► than computer backup, not the best,

01:05:42 ◼   ► because we all hear stories about people

01:05:44 ◼   ► go into an Apple store with a bum phone

01:05:45 ◼   ► and that have never backed it up anywhere,

01:05:47 ◼   ► whether on the cloud or on iTunes, and then they're sad,

01:05:50 ◼   ► 'cause they lose all their photos to their entire family.

01:05:52 ◼   ► So still ways to go there, but that kind of,

01:05:55 ◼   ► that blog post throwing out, you know,

01:05:59 ◼   ► RAID or just the idea of like,

01:06:01 ◼   ► "Apple, your computers are so expensive anyway.

01:06:03 ◼   ► Just put twice the storage in all of them."

01:06:05 ◼   ► Because literally it's really just a cry for help.

01:06:07 ◼   ► Like we're never gonna solve this.

01:06:09 ◼   ► With current technology, there's no way to solve this

01:06:11 ◼   ► without essentially making it not an option.

01:06:15 ◼   ► And we're still not there,

01:06:16 ◼   ► and the new slightly more price-conscious Apple

01:06:21 ◼   ► that is putting spinning hard drives in the new 4K iMac,

01:06:25 ◼   ► and the cheapest 4K iMac,

01:06:28 ◼   ► is definitely not putting twice the storage in everything.

01:06:30 ◼   ► So we're still waiting, bottom line.

01:06:33 ◼   ► And then one more thing on this,

01:06:34 ◼   ► we talked about, Mark talked about CrashPlan,

01:06:37 ◼   ► backing up network drives,

01:06:38 ◼   ► and Backblaze not backing them up.

01:06:40 ◼   ► a lot of requests into Backblaze with that,

01:06:41 ◼   ► and sometimes I say, well, we're thinking about it,

01:06:43 ◼   ► we've heard that request, so on and so forth.

01:06:45 ◼   ► I don't know anything about why Backblaze

01:06:47 ◼   ► doesn't back up network drives,

01:06:49 ◼   ► but based on what I know about how,

01:06:51 ◼   ► what I know about the most efficient way

01:06:55 ◼   ► to know what needs to be backed up on OS X,

01:06:58 ◼   ► the most efficient way you can do that

01:07:01 ◼   ► is to use the various APIs in OS X that let you know,

01:07:04 ◼   ► hey, since the last time you asked me,

01:07:06 ◼   ► I can tell you that things have changed

01:07:08 ◼   ► in this directory, that directory, and that directory,

01:07:09 ◼   ► and maybe even like here's where the changes are, right?

01:07:12 ◼   ► That's what you need to be able to do.

01:07:13 ◼   ► Otherwise, if you're trying to back up

01:07:14 ◼   ► literally four million files,

01:07:16 ◼   ► which is not an unreasonable number of files

01:07:17 ◼   ► for someone with a lot of data,

01:07:20 ◼   ► every time you run the backup,

01:07:21 ◼   ► the first job it has to do is say,

01:07:22 ◼   ► since the last time I back up,

01:07:24 ◼   ► which of these four million files

01:07:26 ◼   ► have either been added, deleted, or changed

01:07:28 ◼   ► since the last time I did a backup?

01:07:30 ◼   ► And without a more efficient method,

01:07:32 ◼   ► you have to basically scan the entire drive

01:07:35 ◼   ► and ask every one of the files, how you doing?

01:07:37 ◼   ► How you doing?

01:07:37 ◼   ► Are you still there?

01:07:38 ◼   ► Are you a file?

01:07:39 ◼   ► and compare its date to the last time you backed it up

01:07:42 ◼   ► or whatever.

01:07:43 ◼   ► That is massively inefficient.

01:07:45 ◼   ► So you want to do a more efficient mechanism,

01:07:46 ◼   ► and OS X offers several more efficient mechanisms.

01:07:49 ◼   ► But most of them require-- pretty much all of them,

01:07:51 ◼   ► I think-- require-- the efficient mechanisms require

01:07:54 ◼   ► the I/O to that drive to go through the kernel

01:07:57 ◼   ► of the operating system.

01:07:58 ◼   ► So if you have local storage, like

01:07:59 ◼   ► if it's mounted like a local disk, whether you're lying

01:08:01 ◼   ► and it's not really local like iSCSI,

01:08:02 ◼   ► or it literally is a local disk connected through a FireWire

01:08:05 ◼   ► or Thunderbolt or USB or SATA or whatever,

01:08:10 ◼   ► if the IO to that disk, meaning you wrote the file

01:08:12 ◼   ► by sending the IO through the kernel running on this Mac

01:08:14 ◼   ► and same for all the other operations,

01:08:16 ◼   ► then the OS X will have a log of all those events

01:08:21 ◼   ► in this little fs_events log,

01:08:23 ◼   ► and it has APIs for you to ask it

01:08:25 ◼   ► what happened since the last time I asked,

01:08:27 ◼   ► and it can give you the answer really quickly and efficiently

01:08:29 ◼   ► without scanning the entire drive.

01:08:30 ◼   ► You can't do that for a network drive

01:08:32 ◼   ► because a network drive,

01:08:33 ◼   ► people could be doing IO too on other Macs,

01:08:35 ◼   ► going through their kernels and their IO system

01:08:37 ◼   ► and your kernel and your OS has no idea that that's happening.

01:08:40 ◼   ► So there's no way to say, hey, what

01:08:41 ◼   ► happened to this network drive since the last time I asked?

01:08:43 ◼   ► Because it doesn't know.

01:08:44 ◼   ► You just don't know.

01:08:46 ◼   ► So if Ac

01:08:46 ◼   ► So if Backblaze did do network drive support,

01:08:48 ◼   ► they would have to do what CrashPlan does,

01:08:51 ◼   ► which is every time you do that,

01:08:53 ◼   ► I gotta rescan the whole freaking network drive

01:08:55 ◼   ► and find out what has changed since the last time.

01:08:57 ◼   ► Because there's no more efficient way to ask about it

01:08:58 ◼   ► because other people could be updating the drive

01:09:00 ◼   ► at the same time, it's not locally attached storage.

01:09:02 ◼   ► So, you know, price-wise or not wanting to do

01:09:05 ◼   ► network drives 'cause they're potentially large

01:09:07 ◼   ► or whatever, there are technical reasons why

01:09:09 ◼   ► even if Backblaze added support for network drives,

01:09:11 ◼   ► it would be crappier than Backblaze's support

01:09:13 ◼   ► for local storage.

01:09:15 ◼   ► I don't know, for CrashPlan, I don't know if it does the good APIs for local storage

01:09:20 ◼   ► even, because I see it grinding my disk a lot.

01:09:23 ◼   ► And the other thing on CrashPlan news is recently they announced that there's a new version

01:09:26 ◼   ► of CrashPlan coming out that does not use Java on OS X, and that's another thorn in

01:09:30 ◼   ► our side about CrashPlan is that it is a Java application, you have to install the JVM for

01:09:34 ◼   ► it and it doesn't feel native, and it's, you know, as opposed to, again, Backblaze, which

01:09:38 ◼   ► is a native application, all that stuff.

01:09:39 ◼   ► So a native version of CrashPlan is supposedly coming out, maybe that will improve what matters,

01:09:44 ◼   ► But it certainly won't improve the fact that it just can't know what changed on a network

01:09:47 ◼   ► drive without scanning all of the stuff on the drive.

01:09:50 ◼   ► I get around that in my personal setup, briefly touching on that, by mostly storing on my

01:09:57 ◼   ► network attached storage either large files like the sparse disk images, I think those

01:10:02 ◼   ► are broken up into like 2 gig strips or whatever, but basically largish files, or things like

01:10:07 ◼   ► video files that are also very large.

01:10:09 ◼   ► So it is a small number of relatively large files and it's faster to scan that.

01:10:13 ◼   ► takes is scales with the number of files that you have to scan. So I have not so many files,

01:10:17 ◼   ► not so many directories, but those files are very often hundreds of megabytes or gigabytes

01:10:22 ◼   ► or larger. So that's how I back up my Synology. I have CrashPlan backing up my Synology, and

01:10:28 ◼   ► even though it does the incredibly inefficient scan the entire disk because it has no choice,

01:10:32 ◼   ► because it's network attached storage, it works in a reasonable amount of time.

01:10:36 ◼   ► All the things you mentioned about network drives having all these limitations based

01:10:41 ◼   ► on the fact that they could be accessed through,

01:10:43 ◼   ► in shared means by somebody else.

01:10:46 ◼   ► I hate browsing network drives.

01:10:48 ◼   ► Like I don't, first of all, Spotlight does not index them.

01:10:51 ◼   ► So if you have files on a network drive,

01:10:54 ◼   ► Spotlight just can't find them, as far as I can tell.

01:10:56 ◼   ► And then, number one thing is I hate getting,

01:10:59 ◼   ► I hate having to connect, you know,

01:11:01 ◼   ► hit connect on the side, I don't know if things

01:11:03 ◼   ► can auto connect reliably these days, what year is this?

01:11:06 ◼   ► But for whatever reason, it seems like that can't happen,

01:11:08 ◼   ► right, so I have to like go to the server,

01:11:11 ◼   ► hit connect, go to the drive, watch the spinner

01:11:14 ◼   ► while it loads the list of files,

01:11:16 ◼   ► open the directory I want, watch the spinner again

01:11:18 ◼   ► as it loads the list of those files.

01:11:19 ◼   ► Like it's so stupid, and I mean that in the sense

01:11:24 ◼   ► that it is not smart, it is just really simple

01:11:27 ◼   ► in a primitive way, and it is just terrible.

01:11:32 ◼   ► Like I don't think it's that unreasonable

01:11:34 ◼   ► to want all my stuff to be available quickly.

01:11:38 ◼   ► Really, even though it results in a desk covered

01:11:41 ◼   ► enclosures and wires and possibly noise issues if you don't go all SSD, I really do think

01:11:46 ◼   ► that just a couple of external drives is by far the best choice most of the time, as long

01:11:53 ◼   ► as it can fit what you need to fit.

01:11:55 ◼   ► And it's probably the right answer for Mike, because I don't think he wants any sort

01:12:01 ◼   ► of management thing.

01:12:03 ◼   ► Like all the stuff that I really get jazzed about in my Synology being able to offload

01:12:07 ◼   ► file downloads or file uploads, being able to have a VPN endpoint. I don't think Mike

01:12:13 ◼   ► wants any of that. And so I think you're right, Marco, that just having one or more enclosures

01:12:18 ◼   ► physically hanging off his computer is probably, from what we can tell, the better answer for

01:12:22 ◼   ► him.

01:12:23 ◼   ► Here's the other angle on that. We mentioned that we got our Synologies for free. And it's

01:12:27 ◼   ► kind of like, for me, it was the ultimate, like, gift. You always want to buy people

01:12:31 ◼   ► gifts that they wouldn't buy themselves, especially people who, like, seem to just buy themselves

01:12:35 ◼   ► or whatever they want, whose names might be Marco.

01:12:37 ◼   ► It's very difficult to know what to get them because it's like, well, if they wanted something,

01:12:41 ◼   ► they would have already bought it for themselves.

01:12:42 ◼   ► But it's usually something that somebody won't buy for themselves because they think it's

01:12:46 ◼   ► a frill or they don't think they need it or whatever, but if they got it, would actually

01:12:50 ◼   ► enjoy it.

01:12:51 ◼   ► And really good gift buyers, and I am not one of them, can figure out what those things

01:12:55 ◼   ► are.

01:12:56 ◼   ► Well, anyway, Synology's PR department actually turned out to be a really good gift buyer

01:12:58 ◼   ► for me because I had been thinking about NASAs for a long time, but I'm like, oh, they're

01:13:01 ◼   ► expensive and they don't have data integrity and I don't want to manage another server

01:13:05 ◼   ► and all sorts of other things, but because I got one for free, it's like, whatever, I'll

01:13:08 ◼   ► throw it down there and see what it's like. And I have to tell you now, if this thing

01:13:11 ◼   ► broke, I would buy another NAS. Whether I would buy another Synology or not, I don't

01:13:14 ◼   ► know. Synology is literally the only NAS I've ever owned, so I have no way to compare it

01:13:18 ◼   ► to other NASes other than stories I've heard from people, but I would buy another one.

01:13:22 ◼   ► Because now that I have it, I do what Casey does. I love having a huge amount of storage

01:13:28 ◼   ► that is in a different room. I love all the little server management things. It's been

01:13:33 ◼   ► totally reliable to me. I let everything auto update. I let the apps, I don't even let the

01:13:36 ◼   ► apps auto update on my phone. I let them auto update on the Synology. I let everything auto

01:13:41 ◼   ► update on it. Everything's always been fine. It's always up. It sends me email if like

01:13:46 ◼   ► it goes onto UPS power so I can tell when someone is overloading a circuit breaker in

01:13:49 ◼   ► the house and I can tell when the power goes back on. I download torrents from it so I

01:13:53 ◼   ► don't have to leave any of my computers running to just download torrents and stuff like that.

01:13:58 ◼   ► It hosts all the video that my kids watch,

01:14:00 ◼   ► integrates with my TV, my TV can read,

01:14:03 ◼   ► can play video right off the technology

01:14:04 ◼   ► with nothing, just the TV.

01:14:06 ◼   ► And of course, every other device that I have

01:14:07 ◼   ► can also play video off of it, like my PlayStation

01:14:09 ◼   ► and the Apple TV in theory, if I got the,

01:14:11 ◼   ► what do you call it, the Plex app and stuff like that.

01:14:14 ◼   ► All this stuff that I would thought would be a frill

01:14:17 ◼   ► and that the UI is like kind of gross and Linux-y,

01:14:19 ◼   ► and it is, I use it all the time and I love it.

01:14:21 ◼   ► And so had I not been gifted this thing,

01:14:24 ◼   ► I wouldn't, I would still be saying like,

01:14:25 ◼   ► "Nah, nah, so I don't need something like that."

01:14:27 ◼   ► now that I have it, I would totally get another one.

01:14:29 ◼   ► Maybe not an 8 bay one, 'cause like Marco,

01:14:31 ◼   ► I have a lot of free space on the thing at this point,

01:14:33 ◼   ► but I like it.

01:14:36 ◼   ► So I wouldn't be so quick to tell somebody,

01:14:39 ◼   ► especially someone who has never owned an NAS

01:14:41 ◼   ► that you totally don't need a NAS,

01:14:42 ◼   ► 'cause you may end up like Marco and say,

01:14:43 ◼   ► you know what, what I really want

01:14:45 ◼   ► is just a bunch of really silent,

01:14:47 ◼   ► you know, SSD storage right on my desk

01:14:49 ◼   ► that's at native speeds.

01:14:51 ◼   ► Or you might end up like Casey and I

01:14:52 ◼   ► and be excited by the possibilities of your NAS

01:14:56 ◼   ► and love it every time you get to copy something to or from it over your local gigabit network.

01:15:02 ◼   ► And the I/O is really fast because it's a bunch of multi-gigabyte video files and you

01:15:06 ◼   ► don't have to hear the disks and they're far away and it's great.

01:15:09 ◼   ► Yeah, I would like to double down on everything you just said, Jon, particularly about, "Oh,

01:15:13 ◼   ► yeah, I don't think I need a NAS.

01:15:15 ◼   ► I've been ruined for life because now that I have the Synology, I will never, ever, ever

01:15:19 ◼   ► not have another NAS.

01:15:21 ◼   ► And unless something just goes horribly wrong with the Synology all of a sudden, I will

01:15:26 ◼   ► probably always buy Synologies from now on because I freaking love this thing.

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01:16:27 ◼   ► I always get compliments on the fractures

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01:16:33 ◼   ► Everyone always asks about them,

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01:16:46 ◼   ► they can get backlogged pretty easily

01:16:47 ◼   ► during really heavy peak periods.

01:16:49 ◼   ► And you might start seeing the ship dates start to slip,

01:16:52 ◼   ► and they'll tell you right up front before you order,

01:16:53 ◼   ► Like we predict this will ship on this date.

01:16:56 ◼   ► But the problem is with the holidays,

01:16:58 ◼   ► everyone has figured out that these things make great gifts.

01:17:01 ◼   ► And they really do.

01:17:01 ◼   ► I've given them as gifts a number of times.

01:17:03 ◼   ► People love them.

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01:17:40 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Fracture for sponsoring our show once again.

01:17:43 ◼   ► - All right, so Google has entered the podcasting ecosystem.

01:17:49 ◼   ► ecosystem. What is this all about?

01:17:52 ◼   ► So we don't know a lot about it yet. So here,

01:17:55 ◼   ► they basically made a blog post and they did a couple interviews that I listened to.

01:17:59 ◼   ► And so the short version is that

01:18:03 ◼   ► Google Play Music, which is their music streaming service I guess,

01:18:06 ◼   ► I really don't know anything about it, but Google Play Music

01:18:09 ◼   ► is adding podcasts to itself.

01:18:13 ◼   ► And so what this will, and it's going to start out Android only,

01:18:16 ◼   ► but for the most part, I believe they say it's going to go everywhere, you know, soon at some point.

01:18:22 ◼   ► So assume it's going to be everywhere soonish. This is basically Google's big play in podcasting as far as we can tell.

01:18:28 ◼   ► They used to have like a really basic

01:18:31 ◼   ► iOS or Android player, I think, but I think it was discontinued a long time ago. Anyway, what this means for podcasting is

01:18:39 ◼   ► still a big question mark. The idea is

01:18:43 ◼   ► they are going to be blending podcasts in with music

01:18:46 ◼   ► in this one unified Google Play Music service,

01:18:49 ◼   ► and then they, I guess, again,

01:18:50 ◼   ► I don't know too much about it,

01:18:51 ◼   ► but I guess the whole idea of Google Play Music

01:18:53 ◼   ► is to kinda select what you want to hear right now

01:18:57 ◼   ► based on all the stuff Google knows about you,

01:18:59 ◼   ► which is a lot.

01:19:00 ◼   ► So it's like, you know, if you're gonna be at the gym,

01:19:03 ◼   ► they're gonna pick gym music for you.

01:19:04 ◼   ► If you're gonna be, you know, in the car,

01:19:06 ◼   ► they're gonna pick, you know, that's like the idea,

01:19:08 ◼   ► is that it kinda automatically can select and play

01:19:12 ◼   ► stuff that they think is gonna make the most sense

01:19:14 ◼   ► for what you're doing right now

01:19:15 ◼   ► based on your activities and taste.

01:19:18 ◼   ► And so they're mixing podcasts into that.

01:19:22 ◼   ► And so it used to be all music,

01:19:23 ◼   ► now it's gonna be music plus podcast you like or something.

01:19:27 ◼   ► It's unclear to me whether it's gonna be like,

01:19:29 ◼   ► you know, whether you subscribe specifically to things

01:19:32 ◼   ► or whether it's just random or whether it's both.

01:19:35 ◼   ► I don't know yet.

01:19:36 ◼   ► And the implementation details are fairly important here.

01:19:40 ◼   ► This is not open, of course, because Google is not open,

01:19:44 ◼   ► despite what they say.

01:19:45 ◼   ► This is not an open standard.

01:19:47 ◼   ► This is neither open nor standard.

01:19:49 ◼   ► - Well, it's better than Facebook instant articles,

01:19:52 ◼   ► where they make you, or Apple News for that matter,

01:19:54 ◼   ► where they make you write some weird format.

01:19:58 ◼   ► They just read your RSS feed, right?

01:20:00 ◼   ► - Yes, but that's a one-way transition.

01:20:04 ◼   ► So here's what happens.

01:20:05 ◼   ► And this is, by the way, very similar to Stitcher.

01:20:08 ◼   ► I don't know if Stitcher still works this way.

01:20:10 ◼   ► haven't looked at in a while, but very similar to how Stitcher at least used to work. So

01:20:14 ◼   ► you can't subscribe to anything you want. The podcaster has to opt into this because

01:20:19 ◼   ► Google is not just reading RSS feeds and then going to your server for each person who plays

01:20:25 ◼   ► the file. Like the way Overcast does it and the way most podcast players do it is everyone

01:20:30 ◼   ► publishes RSS feeds anywhere, who cares, this is the open web. You can publish your RSS

01:20:35 ◼   ► wherever you want. And then the client apps, the players like Overcast or Apple's podcast

01:20:40 ◼   ► app, they go download the file directly from the publisher. And that way the publisher,

01:20:44 ◼   ► first of all, is on the hook for things like bandwidth and everything, but also the publisher

01:20:47 ◼   ► then gets stats. The publisher can control that. The publisher hosts the file and can

01:20:52 ◼   ► serve exactly the file that will be served to people. They can make sure, like, "Give

01:20:56 ◼   ► me this exact encoding with this exact metadata, but this is my file." And they know what

01:21:01 ◼   ► they're serving. They know how many times they've served it to how many people, where

01:21:04 ◼   ► they are, you know, roughly with IP geolocation and stuff like that, and they have, you know,

01:21:09 ◼   ► logs.

01:21:10 ◼   ► >> I think that's something people don't realize about iTunes, is that when you buy music from

01:21:13 ◼   ► iTunes, Apple is giving that to you.

01:21:15 ◼   ► They host the files.

01:21:16 ◼   ► When you buy applications from the App Store, Apple is giving you those files.

01:21:20 ◼   ► They host the applications.

01:21:21 ◼   ► But when you do a podcast, which are in the same place and look very similar, Apple is

01:21:25 ◼   ► not hosting podcasts.

01:21:26 ◼   ► Those are coming from the individual podcast or servers, which is why they're so slow half

01:21:29 ◼   ► the time.

01:21:30 ◼   ► >> Yeah.

01:21:31 ◼   ► So anyway, what Stitcher came out with a few years ago

01:21:34 ◼   ► with their service was basically like,

01:21:37 ◼   ► it was a very similar thing where like you,

01:21:39 ◼   ► you as a publisher would have to opt in,

01:21:40 ◼   ► well at first you didn't, but that was a mistake

01:21:42 ◼   ► and then they changed it.

01:21:44 ◼   ► You as a publisher have to opt in

01:21:45 ◼   ► because what they were doing was basically

01:21:47 ◼   ► re-hosting your files first of all.

01:21:49 ◼   ► So that not, so that they would read your RSS feed

01:21:52 ◼   ► and then you, they would automatically download

01:21:55 ◼   ► all your files and basically be their own cache for them

01:21:58 ◼   ► and their own CDN and serve their copy of your file

01:22:01 ◼   ► to all their listeners.

01:22:02 ◼   ► So they kind of ate the cost and the bandwidth there,

01:22:05 ◼   ► but they also got all the control and all the stats.

01:22:08 ◼   ► And they also would transcode your file

01:22:10 ◼   ► down to a lower bit rate to save space

01:22:12 ◼   ► and to save bandwidth and to make it stream better

01:22:14 ◼   ► for people.

01:22:14 ◼   ► - And to make it sound worse.

01:22:15 ◼   ► - Right, and of course it would make it sound worse.

01:22:18 ◼   ► So Google Play Music is doing all of those things.

01:22:22 ◼   ► It is exactly the same kind of thing.

01:22:24 ◼   ► So you, as the publisher, you go and agree to their terms

01:22:28 ◼   ► and you submit your fee.

01:22:30 ◼   ► So if we decide that we don't wanna do this,

01:22:32 ◼   ► you just can't play ATP and Google Play Music.

01:22:34 ◼   ► Like no matter how much you like the app,

01:22:36 ◼   ► you just can't play it, 'cause it isn't based

01:22:38 ◼   ► on the open web at all.

01:22:40 ◼   ► And whatever show, if a brand new show launches,

01:22:42 ◼   ► you wanna go check it out, it probably won't be there.

01:22:45 ◼   ► We'll see what happens over time.

01:22:46 ◼   ► But anyway, so you go and subscribe to the show,

01:22:48 ◼   ► and then you are getting their copy of the file.

01:22:52 ◼   ► So your download won't show up

01:22:55 ◼   ► in the publisher's main stats system.

01:22:57 ◼   ► Now Google is saying they will offer publisher stats,

01:22:59 ◼   ► like if you go into their dashboard

01:23:01 ◼   ► and you look at their stats,

01:23:03 ◼   ► but most podcasters who care about stats,

01:23:05 ◼   ► which is anybody who serves ads,

01:23:07 ◼   ► they already have their own systems for that.

01:23:10 ◼   ► So this won't integrate with that.

01:23:11 ◼   ► This will be a separate thing you have to opt into

01:23:13 ◼   ► and then go and check and then manually

01:23:15 ◼   ► add into your stats system somehow

01:23:18 ◼   ► or make some kind of API thing if there even is an API,

01:23:21 ◼   ► but there usually isn't for modern Google services

01:23:23 ◼   ► because they're so open.

01:23:24 ◼   ► So anyway, they're gonna copy and then transcode your file,

01:23:28 ◼   ► possibly reduce the quality, and of course,

01:23:30 ◼   ► they're gonna reserve the right to play ads,

01:23:32 ◼   ► fortunately not in the middle of your show,

01:23:34 ◼   ► but between shows, so you know,

01:23:36 ◼   ► 'cause I think they can play ads wherever they want

01:23:38 ◼   ► between any songs, 'cause I think there's a free tier

01:23:40 ◼   ► with ads, something like that.

01:23:41 ◼   ► So that part is a little odd and uncomfortable

01:23:44 ◼   ► for podcasters, but you know, that's the reality

01:23:46 ◼   ► of free streaming services, at least they aren't

01:23:47 ◼   ► cutting into the middle of our show.

01:23:49 ◼   ► So that's the deal for podcasters, basically,

01:23:53 ◼   ► they're doing it the Google way, where they know best,

01:23:57 ◼   ► They don't want to deal with you peons.

01:23:59 ◼   ► You deal with their system, and that's the way to do it.

01:24:03 ◼   ► - Well, the other aspect that is very Google-ish,

01:24:05 ◼   ► but not evil, to use the old Google thing,

01:24:09 ◼   ► is that once they have your files and your data,

01:24:13 ◼   ► they will almost undoubtedly serve them up faster

01:24:16 ◼   ► than what the random individual podcaster's gonna do,

01:24:19 ◼   ► and they will also, probably, everyone is assuming,

01:24:21 ◼   ► and I don't see why they wouldn't,

01:24:23 ◼   ► run them through something that translates the text

01:24:25 ◼   ► into speech, provide full text search for them,

01:24:28 ◼   ► like trying to obviously underscore David Smith

01:24:30 ◼   ► for finding things.

01:24:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:33 ◼   ► Maybe that won't be on day one,

01:24:34 ◼   ► maybe it'll be on year three or four,

01:24:36 ◼   ► but surely, like basically once Google gets data

01:24:39 ◼   ► and they're getting data by essentially reading your RSS feed

01:24:42 ◼   ► and pulling all those files, they are transcoding them,

01:24:44 ◼   ► they are processing them, I'm sure they will,

01:24:48 ◼   ► if they have any kind of algorithms that do anything useful

01:24:51 ◼   ► related to search to audio files, and I'm sure they do,

01:24:54 ◼   ► they're gonna do that to podcasts.

01:24:55 ◼   ► And Marco, you're talking about it from the perspective

01:24:59 ◼   ► of a publisher, but from the perspective of a user,

01:25:03 ◼   ► like they did with Google Photos,

01:25:05 ◼   ► if Google can provide something that appears magical,

01:25:07 ◼   ► like you can just type the word teacup

01:25:08 ◼   ► and see a bunch of pictures of teacups,

01:25:10 ◼   ► or you can just type some words and find podcasts

01:25:12 ◼   ► where those things were spoken using the magic of Google,

01:25:15 ◼   ► that is an attractive feature to users

01:25:17 ◼   ► because there is nothing equivalent

01:25:18 ◼   ► in any of the other podcast systems,

01:25:20 ◼   ► including probably Stitcher,

01:25:21 ◼   ► because I imagine they don't have all the data analysis tools

01:25:23 ◼   ► that Google has at their disposal.

01:25:25 ◼   ► So the potential upside to Google's own little,

01:25:30 ◼   ► Google Reader style, not gonna call it a walled garden,

01:25:34 ◼   ► that's called the chain link fenced garden,

01:25:36 ◼   ► is that they can provide features to users

01:25:38 ◼   ► by sucking in all of this data.

01:25:40 ◼   ► That other people who are either less interested in podcasts

01:25:43 ◼   ► because Apple seems to be like,

01:25:44 ◼   ► well, they're all right, they're whatever, they're there,

01:25:47 ◼   ► or just don't have the tech like Stitcher,

01:25:49 ◼   ► those companies can't do that.

01:25:50 ◼   ► So there is potential user upside of this service

01:25:54 ◼   ► and that scares me a little bit

01:25:56 ◼   ► because I don't want podcasts to,

01:25:58 ◼   ► I don't want Google Play to become the equivalent of iTunes,

01:26:01 ◼   ► like we said in past shows.

01:26:03 ◼   ► The fact that Apple is kind of mildly disinterested

01:26:05 ◼   ► in podcasts is good, I like that.

01:26:07 ◼   ► I like it because it keeps it open,

01:26:09 ◼   ► it keeps podcasts as a thing that anyone can have

01:26:11 ◼   ► and Apple's like, "Whatever, as long as it's not porn,

01:26:13 ◼   ► "doesn't have too much objectionable material,

01:26:17 ◼   ► "we'll put it up in our directory

01:26:18 ◼   ► "and you host the files and go ahead."

01:26:22 ◼   ► I like that, I like that better

01:26:23 ◼   ► than a Google Reader scenario where eventually the only way

01:26:27 ◼   ► anyone ever listens to podcasts is through this Google thing.

01:26:29 ◼   ► We are forced to do this Google thing

01:26:31 ◼   ► and have ads inserted between our show.

01:26:32 ◼   ► We are forced to have our show transcoded

01:26:34 ◼   ► and have no control over it.

01:26:35 ◼   ► We are forced to add up numbers from two different locations.

01:26:38 ◼   ► That's not-- long term, that's not good for anybody.

01:26:41 ◼   ► Short term, we're all saying as producers,

01:26:44 ◼   ► we don't like it that much.

01:26:45 ◼   ► But if everybody starts going through Google Play,

01:26:48 ◼   ► we'll be forced to put our stuff up there.

01:26:49 ◼   ► Otherwise, we're going to cut our audience by 50%, 20%, 90%.

01:26:52 ◼   ► Like in the end, Google Reader was all there was in RSS.

01:26:56 ◼   ► And then when Google Reader ran away,

01:26:58 ◼   ► there was a big power vacuum and a few other things

01:27:00 ◼   ► like Feedbit and stuff came up,

01:27:02 ◼   ► but it's just never been the same.

01:27:04 ◼   ► - Yeah, so that to me, like the whole like, you know,

01:27:07 ◼   ► what if this becomes so big

01:27:09 ◼   ► that we all have to play ball thing?

01:27:10 ◼   ► Like that is the biggest risk for publishers.

01:27:12 ◼   ► It does seem on the face of it.

01:27:14 ◼   ► Like we've kind of decided early on

01:27:17 ◼   ► that we didn't wanna be on Stitcher.

01:27:19 ◼   ► And most of the reason we didn't wanna be on Stitcher

01:27:21 ◼   ► was all of that.

01:27:22 ◼   ► There was also, the way I read the terms, there was a promotional requirement to promote

01:27:26 ◼   ► Stitcher on the show.

01:27:28 ◼   ► That's one of the reasons why you hear so many people at the end of their podcast saying,

01:27:31 ◼   ► "Find us on iTunes and Stitcher," because they had to.

01:27:34 ◼   ► And we did not agree to that, so we didn't do it.

01:27:37 ◼   ► The only reason we could say no to that was because it was so small.

01:27:39 ◼   ► By most people's estimation, Stitcher is 5% or less of the listener base.

01:27:44 ◼   ► So it wasn't big enough to make it worth those downsides.

01:27:49 ◼   ► But this might become that big.

01:27:50 ◼   ► And right now, podcast listening in general is very, very lopsided right now towards iOS.

01:27:59 ◼   ► Libsyn occasionally will publish or will discuss stats and I believe the ratio is something

01:28:04 ◼   ► like 8 to 1 in favor of iOS among all shows Libsyn hosts, which is a pretty wide range

01:28:08 ◼   ► of shows.

01:28:10 ◼   ► So the total podcast listenership is still very iOS heavy.

01:28:15 ◼   ► And that might continue to be the case for quite some time, in my opinion, because if

01:28:19 ◼   ► If you look at what podcasts are popular and what kind of people listen to podcasts, I

01:28:25 ◼   ► think there's a lot of overlap with the kind of people who traditionally have listened

01:28:29 ◼   ► to public radio.

01:28:31 ◼   ► And that does tend to skew upscale, younger, smarter, richer, more liberal.

01:28:37 ◼   ► And those are all, I think, demographics that are more likely to have iPhones than Android

01:28:42 ◼   ► devices also.

01:28:43 ◼   ► And I'm not trying to say that to be inflammatory.

01:28:46 ◼   ► I think that's actually true.

01:28:47 ◼   ► I think that's actually borne out by stats.

01:28:49 ◼   ► feel free if I'm wrong, feel free to tell Jon.

01:28:53 ◼   ► So this might not matter in the sense that maybe Android people just aren't that into

01:28:57 ◼   ► podcast listening enough to take over the whole market.

01:29:01 ◼   ► I'm not going to say there aren't any, but it's not going to be a massive proportion

01:29:07 ◼   ► of the market right now.

01:29:10 ◼   ► But who knows what will happen in the future, right?

01:29:13 ◼   ► I don't want podcasting to be like YouTube, where right now if you need to make video

01:29:17 ◼   ► video online, this basically is YouTube. You don't really have a lot of other choices that

01:29:22 ◼   ► have any reasonable number of viewers. If you want to reach the people who watch videos,

01:29:26 ◼   ► you basically have to publish videos on YouTube. I don't want podcasting to ever become that.

01:29:30 ◼   ► I'm a little worried about this from that point of view. The only thing that gives me

01:29:35 ◼   ► hope is that it doesn't seem like it will be that big. It seems like the kind of thing

01:29:39 ◼   ► they're doing because it isn't that much work for them to do in the grand scheme of things.

01:29:44 ◼   ► trying to boost Google Play Music, make it appeal to more people. It wouldn't surprise

01:29:48 ◼   ► me if Apple ended up doing something similar with like blending podcasts into Apple Music

01:29:53 ◼   ► in a similar kind of way because these services are both trying to beat each other over the

01:29:59 ◼   ► head and attract people with podcasts. Spotify, didn't they do the same thing or they talked

01:30:04 ◼   ► about doing the same thing?

01:30:05 ◼   ► I thought they talked about Spotify, yeah, but I don't, I mean I use Spotify several

01:30:10 ◼   ► times a week if not daily and I don't recall having even stumbled onto a podcast section

01:30:15 ◼   ► of Spotify. Now it doesn't mean it's not there, I just haven't noticed.

01:30:18 ◼   ► The way they're positioning this as like just something that will start playing when you

01:30:24 ◼   ► want to hear a podcast or something, that's, we'll have to see how this is implemented

01:30:28 ◼   ► in practice. But that to me sounds like this is a system developed by people who hate podcasts.

01:30:35 ◼   ► Or don't understand them because they don't understand it's like a TV show. You don't,

01:30:38 ◼   ► You know, when we were kids, or when I was a kid anyway, you could watch any episode