ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► I was working on something right before the show started and I paused for the show and

00:00:04 ◼   ► now I'm like in that annoying mode where I'm thinking about that thing I was working on

00:00:09 ◼   ► and not thinking about what I should be thinking about.

00:00:12 ◼   ► Now when you say pause…

00:00:15 ◼   ► Jason Seifer, everyone.

00:00:16 ◼   ► Yeah, I feel like we should all like kiss our fingers and plan up to the sky now or

00:00:20 ◼   ► something.

00:00:21 ◼   ► Oh, God.

00:00:22 ◼   ► Is this a reference I'm not getting?

00:00:26 ◼   ► Me and Casey, the reference getters, right Casey?

00:00:29 ◼   ► Yeah, totally. That's, among other things, you could call that a sportsball reference.

00:00:33 ◼   ► I couldn't even tell you which sport you're talking about.

00:00:36 ◼   ► No, it's every sport, Marco. Every single sport. And the Grammys, and the Oscars. Everything.

00:00:42 ◼   ► It's a reference to everything. It's a reference to life.

00:00:45 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:00:46 ◼   ► [Music]

00:00:48 ◼   ► A while back, this was easily two or three months ago, I was fiddling around and tried

00:00:54 ◼   ► to teach myself React, not React Native, just straight up React, and wrote a Showbot in

00:01:00 ◼   ► React. It is at Showbot hyphen R on the web, if you'd like to see it, probably die in

00:01:06 ◼   ► a terrible awful fire. But it is presently working, which is exciting.

00:01:10 ◼   ► Now, Jon, I assume you're going to have an opinion on the different placement and

00:01:15 ◼   ► coloring of the upvote arrows on the Showbot R compared to the regular Showbot.

00:01:21 ◼   ► was not correctly aligned, like along the center line of the page, so I had to close

00:01:25 ◼   ► the window.

00:01:26 ◼   ► Also, you know, if any web application framework should have an exclamation point at the end

00:01:32 ◼   ► of its name in the grand tradition of Yahoo, it's React.

00:01:36 ◼   ► Should be React!

00:01:38 ◼   ► So it's 165 lines that's including blank spaces, comments, etc.

00:01:45 ◼   ► On the React version, it is 180 on the straight jQuery version.

00:01:51 ◼   ► So I've saved 15 lines.

00:01:54 ◼   ► Woot woot.

00:01:55 ◼   ► That's worth rewriting the entire thing?

00:01:56 ◼   ► Yeah, totally.

00:01:57 ◼   ► I did teach myself React, and the funny thing is I'm looking at this code and I'm like,

00:02:00 ◼   ► "What the fuck is this stuff doing?"

00:02:02 ◼   ► I have no idea what's happening anymore, because it was like two months ago and I've not touched

00:02:05 ◼   ► it since.

00:02:06 ◼   ► Well, one of us has to play with new things on a regular basis.

00:02:09 ◼   ► That's certainly not going to be you two old farts.

00:02:11 ◼   ► Definitely not me.

00:02:12 ◼   ► John has a chance, maybe.

00:02:13 ◼   ► I do any chance I get new versions of pearl. Yeah, all sorts of new things

00:02:19 ◼   ► Exciting new versions of jQuery that leave ie8 behind. Oh, I didn't realize that was the thing now. It's a thing the best is like

00:02:26 ◼   ► you know, so it supports ie9 and above but even in ie9 you have to convince ie to

00:02:33 ◼   ► Pretend that it's a good browser by like forcing the you know

00:02:37 ◼   ► Like a meta tag for like a turn it makes your edge mode is enabled because like the first time I loaded up

00:02:41 ◼   ► What the, I thought this thing works in IE 9.

00:02:44 ◼   ► What is it complaining about?

00:02:45 ◼   ► Oh, I have to tell IE, don't be stupid.

00:02:49 ◼   ► Edge mode, please.

00:02:50 ◼   ► And then, okay, yeah, now all of a sudden, stupid.

00:02:53 ◼   ► Anyway, web, fun.

00:02:55 ◼   ► - Do I have to be testing in Edge?

00:02:57 ◼   ► Is it different enough that I need to care or not?

00:03:00 ◼   ► - No, it's like Edge mode in IE 9.

00:03:02 ◼   ► I'm not talking about the actual browser.

00:03:05 ◼   ► Like there's IE 9, there's IE 10,

00:03:06 ◼   ► I think there's even IE 11,

00:03:08 ◼   ► and then there's that, whatever the hell

00:03:09 ◼   ► that other thing is.

00:03:10 ◼   ► I just-- I really-- I fought a long time in--

00:03:16 ◼   ► I don't know if I fought.

00:03:17 ◼   ► But anyway, the path of my career has been--

00:03:21 ◼   ► IE used to be a thorn in our side,

00:03:22 ◼   ► but you just had to deal with it because everybody had it.

00:03:25 ◼   ► And eventually we came to this place

00:03:27 ◼   ► where we can develop-- do our web application development

00:03:31 ◼   ► for a set of modern browsers, and then only at the very, very

00:03:35 ◼   ► end see now what kind of disaster

00:03:37 ◼   ► is this in the various versions of IE that we support.

00:03:40 ◼   ► And then sort of like spackle over them and try to make it better with those used to be the reverse you had to make

00:03:44 ◼   ► It work in IE and everything and then you could see if there were some nice things you could do in the modern browsers now

00:03:48 ◼   ► develop everything against Chrome Firefox or Safari

00:03:52 ◼   ► Or I suppose even opera and then at the very end when you're done and you're happy with it

00:03:57 ◼   ► It's like all right now. Let me load it in IE and you just just grit your teeth. You just like oh

00:04:01 ◼   ► Is opera still do they switch to my kid? I think they still making their own render or is it all up kit now?

00:04:07 ◼   ► I don't remember. I remember that sounds vaguely familiar to me, but I have never had a job where I have had to support opera ever

00:04:14 ◼   ► No, nobody ever has

00:04:16 ◼   ► Maybe someone who people who work for the Opera, you know the company that makes the Opera website maybe

00:04:21 ◼   ► Maybe do you think even they use opera? Yeah, someone's got it. Oh, we're gonna we're gonna get so little email. Yep

00:04:30 ◼   ► Yep, but all three devout users that that that also happen to listen to this show are gonna be very upset

00:04:36 ◼   ► - Extremely.

00:04:37 ◼   ► - Good thing about that feedback.

00:04:38 ◼   ► Anyway, we should probably do some follow-up.

00:04:41 ◼   ► And we have some follow-up.

00:04:43 ◼   ► And I would blame this on Jon,

00:04:45 ◼   ► but this is not Jon's fault.

00:04:47 ◼   ► I have actually added a bit of follow-up.

00:04:49 ◼   ► And I'd like to start with a bit.

00:04:51 ◼   ► - At two, KC?

00:04:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, I know, I know, I'm sorry, Marco.

00:04:55 ◼   ► By the way, that's a reference to Shakespeare,

00:04:57 ◼   ► I believe, Julius Caesar.

00:04:58 ◼   ► - I don't think it's just Shakespeare.

00:04:59 ◼   ► I think it's Julius Caesar, like, period.

00:05:02 ◼   ► I think that's just like a thing that was most likely true

00:05:05 ◼   ► that he most likely said something to that effect possibly.

00:05:09 ◼   ► - Fine, fine.

00:05:10 ◼   ► Everyone's a critic, right?

00:05:11 ◼   ► So David S. wrote in and he wanted to tell us

00:05:14 ◼   ► that the TrackPoint mouse,

00:05:17 ◼   ► which we discussed a lot last episode,

00:05:19 ◼   ► has been scientifically proven, well, by IBM,

00:05:23 ◼   ► to be more accurate than a trackpad.

00:05:26 ◼   ► So David S. writes, "In the late '90s,

00:05:28 ◼   ► I worked at IBM's User Systems Ergonomics Research Group

00:05:31 ◼   ► for a short time.

00:05:32 ◼   ► The group did all sorts of user interface research,

00:05:34 ◼   ► including designing and testing new types of keyboards and pointing devices, but they're

00:05:38 ◼   ► also known for having invented the trackpoint.

00:05:40 ◼   ► So of course, as part of that development, they did lots of tests on the ergonomics of

00:05:42 ◼   ► the trackpoint.

00:05:44 ◼   ► The results are very interesting.

00:05:46 ◼   ► As I recall, people were both faster and more accurate when using a trackpoint compared

00:05:49 ◼   ► with a trackpad.

00:05:50 ◼   ► I believe the difference was small for people who were novices on both devices, but they

00:05:53 ◼   ► also found that people got much better with some experience on the trackpoint, and that

00:05:56 ◼   ► a week of experience made a big difference.

00:05:58 ◼   ► Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah, because the accuracy differences were small for novices,

00:06:03 ◼   ► And because the TrackPoint interface was a little easier to figure out initially, people

00:06:06 ◼   ► actually tended to like the trackpads more at first, or for example, in using a computer

00:06:11 ◼   ► in the store.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And then he has provided a link to Microsoft of all places that has what appears to be

00:06:16 ◼   ► a scan of this research paper.

00:06:20 ◼   ► So apparently it has been scientifically proven that TrackPoints are better if you believe

00:06:25 ◼   ► IBM.

00:06:26 ◼   ► Well, also like IBM, the maker of TrackPoints, did one study that proved that TrackPoints

00:06:33 ◼   ► were slightly better than the trackpads of 1990s.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And that's like, trackpads when they first came out

00:06:39 ◼   ► really were terrible, and they really did get a lot better

00:06:42 ◼   ► in the early 2000s and throughout the 2000 to 2010 interval

00:06:46 ◼   ► like as mostly, let's be honest, as Apple made them better

00:06:49 ◼   ► because the PC industry's trackpads still usually,

00:06:52 ◼   ► as we said last time, really suck

00:06:54 ◼   ► compared to anything good and usable.

00:06:57 ◼   ► Modern trackpads are, with the exception of the Force Touch,

00:07:01 ◼   ► way, way, way better than what they were probably testing against. Whereas track points probably

00:07:06 ◼   ► have not really changed since then, because there just isn't that much to change about

00:07:09 ◼   ► them.

00:07:10 ◼   ► If they tested, like, a series of tasks where you have to involve typing and mouse cursor,

00:07:15 ◼   ► that's where the track point would really shine, because that's its biggest advantage,

00:07:17 ◼   ► especially for people who are good typists or touch typists, is that you don't have to

00:07:21 ◼   ► relocate. You can sort of keep your hands in the same position and have ready access

00:07:24 ◼   ► to cursor movement and clicking buttons and typing all at the same time. So you'd -- I

00:07:29 ◼   ► I assumed that they would do well there, but yeah, the trackpads of the 1990s were just

00:07:33 ◼   ► these little tiny things that, like, it was barely enough room to move your fingers, like,

00:07:36 ◼   ► an inch and a half by an inch and a half, like, very small, so you're trying to navigate

00:07:40 ◼   ► a screen.

00:07:41 ◼   ► The screens weren't that much smaller.

00:07:42 ◼   ► The screens were still like, 15-inch laptops existed.

00:07:45 ◼   ► Trying to move a cursor around a 15-inch screen by swiping your finger around a little plastic-y

00:07:50 ◼   ► 2x2 square, not very fun.

00:07:53 ◼   ► But I would imagine that the trackpads would do it.

00:07:55 ◼   ► Anyway, everyone should use mice.

00:07:57 ◼   ► The end.

00:07:58 ◼   ► So you two beat the piss out of me because you say that it's scientifically proven that vinyl's better.

00:08:03 ◼   ► Here it is. I give you a scientific study that track points are better. And oh no, it's not good enough.

00:08:10 ◼   ► Well, I mean, this one study is done by the company that invented the track point.

00:08:14 ◼   ► So it's perhaps a little bit biased. And unlike vinyl and CDs, track pads have changed since the 1990s.

00:08:20 ◼   ► Vinyl? Not changed since 1990s. Only to perhaps get worse. And the knowledge of how to correctly master them gone away.

00:08:26 ◼   ► So that's the only thing that has happened to vinyl. CDs, the format is exactly the same,

00:08:30 ◼   ► the specs are exactly the same, nothing has changed related to CDs since the 1990s.

00:08:34 ◼   ► Screw you guys, I'm going home. That's a reference, by the way.

00:08:37 ◼   ► In other news, speaking of inferior pointing devices,

00:08:42 ◼   ► there are so many tap-to-click wizards in our audience, who knew?

00:08:46 ◼   ► So many self-proclaimed tap-to-click wizards.

00:08:48 ◼   ► Oh, here we go. Everything has a caveat.

00:08:51 ◼   ► Right, well no, I'm saying like they I believe that they they believe their self to tap to click wizards

00:08:57 ◼   ► Like the basically that they don't they don't perceive any impairment to using tap to click that is the way they prefer to do it

00:09:03 ◼   ► They are never frustrated by it is not a compromise that they're dealing with. They don't accidentally make any clicks

00:09:09 ◼   ► It's just you know, they're they are tapped to click wizards according to my definition of like, you know

00:09:15 ◼   ► We're saying I was saying that I'm not one because whenever I turn on tap to click I find myself inadvertently

00:09:21 ◼   ► Doing things I didn't intend to do and that pisses me off and it makes me turn that mode off

00:09:25 ◼   ► Right these people have to click wizards. No problem with it whatsoever

00:09:28 ◼   ► Does it mean they never make any kind of errors or do they make the errors? It doesn't bother them either way

00:09:33 ◼   ► they're basically tapped to click wizards because

00:09:35 ◼   ► It's the way they prefer to work it

00:09:37 ◼   ► None of them expressed any sort of caveats about like well

00:09:40 ◼   ► I used it all the time and it only annoys me a little bit. They were like, nope

00:09:43 ◼   ► I'm a wizard so I guess those guys can start a club

00:09:48 ◼   ► I demand to see proof and a scientific study. No, no, they are they they are tapped to look was

00:09:53 ◼   ► I just didn't think there were that many people who basically

00:09:56 ◼   ► Don't have any like there's no downsides for them for using that to like and it's probably people who like learned on it

00:10:02 ◼   ► You know who never who just like once they found out that was a mode and like the first you know

00:10:06 ◼   ► Day that they got their laptop turned it on and like that's how these are up top and that's how they've trained themselves to

00:10:11 ◼   ► To use it. They don't have any other habits that they're breaking right there

00:10:15 ◼   ► just this is the way they've built their habits.

00:10:17 ◼   ► Right, and maybe they actually just accept that a certain degree of unreliability is

00:10:23 ◼   ► just part of using a trackpad.

00:10:25 ◼   ► I'm willing to believe that a large part of them actually don't have accidental tap-to-clicks,

00:10:29 ◼   ► because that gets to the next feedback from ML, whose name consists of two capital letters

00:10:34 ◼   ► separated by a space.

00:10:36 ◼   ► I don't understand how you would accidentally click with tap-to-click.

00:10:39 ◼   ► If you put a finger down and leave it, then it's not a click.

00:10:41 ◼   ► If you put a finger down and lift it back up, then it is a click.

00:10:44 ◼   ► On last show we used the wrong terminology in terms of like how much force you apply, but that's basically you know

00:10:49 ◼   ► There's no force sensor. It's basically there wasn't back in the day

00:10:51 ◼   ► It's timing based and the reason I personally accidentally do clicks is all my habits around trackpad use

00:11:00 ◼   ► involve

00:11:02 ◼   ► Don't involve making sure that I don't accidentally touch the surface like briefly or brush against it with some other finger or whatever

00:11:10 ◼   ► That leads to the other trackpad setting that we didn't talk about last time

00:11:12 ◼   ► which is, what the hell is the phrasing of it?

00:11:14 ◼   ► Like, ignore unintentional,

00:11:18 ◼   ► it's been phrased different ways.

00:11:19 ◼   ► Ignore unintentional taps,

00:11:21 ◼   ► and that one is infuriating

00:11:22 ◼   ► because the trackpad is trying to figure out

00:11:25 ◼   ► what's an accident and what's not,

00:11:27 ◼   ► and it will go into this mode where it's like,

00:11:29 ◼   ► oh, I'm gonna ignore that 'cause it looks like an accident.

00:11:31 ◼   ► Then you try to do something legit and it ignores you,

00:11:33 ◼   ► and you become furious.

00:11:34 ◼   ► You're like, no, except my command, my finger is moving.

00:11:37 ◼   ► But anyway, all my habits were not designed around

00:11:41 ◼   ► the idea that I have to be cognizant of how long my finger is in contact with the trackpad

00:11:45 ◼   ► because if it is in contact with the trackpad too briefly, that counts as a click.

00:11:50 ◼   ► And so that's just not how my hands work.

00:11:52 ◼   ► And I have years of using trackpads without tap to click before I, you know, before tap

00:11:59 ◼   ► to click became even a thing probably, but certainly before I ever tried to turn it on.

00:12:03 ◼   ► So I'm accidentally hitting the trackpad because during the course of using a trackpad, my

00:12:07 ◼   ► briefly come in contact with the trackpad

00:12:09 ◼   ► in ways that register as clicks,

00:12:11 ◼   ► but I'm not intending to click at all.

00:12:12 ◼   ► It doesn't happen all the time,

00:12:13 ◼   ► but it happens enough that I find it infuriating.

00:12:16 ◼   ► - Right, because it's like if you need to do

00:12:18 ◼   ► a very, very small, fast cursor movement,

00:12:22 ◼   ► like if you need to move the mouse over

00:12:23 ◼   ► like one or two pixels on screen,

00:12:25 ◼   ► it is very easy for that to be misinterpreted,

00:12:28 ◼   ► because the way it differentiates

00:12:30 ◼   ► is not just how quick the tap is,

00:12:33 ◼   ► but how much it has moved during the touchdown time span.

00:12:37 ◼   ► because obviously if you mean to tap to click,

00:12:40 ◼   ► then it's going to be effectively unmoving,

00:12:44 ◼   ► but of course there's gonna be a very small amount

00:12:45 ◼   ► of movement a lot of times just 'cause of imprecisions

00:12:48 ◼   ► and the way people work.

00:12:49 ◼   ► So it has to determine in software the difference

00:12:53 ◼   ► between an intentional small quick movement of the cursor

00:12:57 ◼   ► and a tap to click.

00:12:59 ◼   ► And that is not a perfect science and it never will be.

00:13:02 ◼   ► There's always gonna be some little flex margin of error

00:13:04 ◼   ► where it's gonna get wrong sometimes.

00:13:07 ◼   ► And so if you're doing certain things

00:13:09 ◼   ► that require small fast cursor movements,

00:13:11 ◼   ► you will probably hit this problem more often

00:13:13 ◼   ► than if you're not doing that kind of movement.

00:13:15 ◼   ► - And they have no choice but to put that in.

00:13:17 ◼   ► They can't make you, they can't demand

00:13:19 ◼   ► that you precisely put your finger down

00:13:21 ◼   ► and precisely lift it up without moving it

00:13:22 ◼   ► because that would mean it would become very difficult

00:13:24 ◼   ► that they just have to build in that margin

00:13:26 ◼   ► to make it comfortable for people

00:13:27 ◼   ► to actually use tap to click.

00:13:29 ◼   ► But that same margin is what makes you

00:13:30 ◼   ► accidentally activate it.

00:13:31 ◼   ► And I think the reason, you know,

00:13:33 ◼   ► control freaks like me are so against tap to click,

00:13:36 ◼   ► because A, we have this error rate,

00:13:37 ◼   ► and B, the error rate is potentially very,

00:13:39 ◼   ► like we have dialog boxes with buttons in them.

00:13:43 ◼   ► The buttons are close to each other.

00:13:44 ◼   ► If you were to move the cursor over

00:13:46 ◼   ► from one button to the other, that's not very far,

00:13:48 ◼   ► and if it actually registers as a click

00:13:49 ◼   ► that did cancel or okay when you wanted to do the opposite,

00:13:51 ◼   ► that could be a data-destructive operation.

00:13:53 ◼   ► Like there's, not that you'd be hitting dialog buttons

00:13:56 ◼   ► with a mouse cursor anyway, but anyway.

00:13:59 ◼   ► A bad click in the wrong place at the wrong time,

00:14:01 ◼   ► Even if it's just accidentally having a bad click

00:14:04 ◼   ► that you didn't realize put the input focus into a window,

00:14:07 ◼   ► into the window that you didn't think you were typing in

00:14:09 ◼   ► and get one of those wrong window situations.

00:14:11 ◼   ► Like data loss, wrong window stuff,

00:14:14 ◼   ► I just, yeah, I don't like it.

00:14:15 ◼   ► - All right then.

00:14:17 ◼   ► - That's the final verdict.

00:14:18 ◼   ► I don't like it.

00:14:19 ◼   ► - All right, so what does Rich at the pond have to say?

00:14:24 ◼   ► - He was giving a defense of trackballs.

00:14:26 ◼   ► And the idea behind this is if you,

00:14:29 ◼   ► due to old age or if you have any other

00:14:31 ◼   ► sort of motor problems, sometimes it's difficult to,

00:14:34 ◼   ► I've seen people with this problem in real life,

00:14:37 ◼   ► to position the cursor over something

00:14:40 ◼   ► and click without moving the cursor again.

00:14:42 ◼   ► And when the button and the thing that moves are separate,

00:14:46 ◼   ► like they are in a trackball,

00:14:47 ◼   ► you move the ball, you're moving the cursor.

00:14:48 ◼   ► You take your hands totally off the ball,

00:14:49 ◼   ► then you can press the button at your leisure.

00:14:51 ◼   ► Usually the buttons are very large

00:14:52 ◼   ► and they are separate from the ball

00:14:53 ◼   ► and you can be sure that where you're clicking

00:14:54 ◼   ► is where the cursor is.

00:14:55 ◼   ► So it's better for people with motor impairments.

00:14:59 ◼   ► Trackpad is similar when they have the button on it,

00:15:00 ◼   ► but the physical button, that's gone now.

00:15:03 ◼   ► And now you move the cursor on the trackpad

00:15:06 ◼   ► to get where you want,

00:15:07 ◼   ► and then you can kind of take your hand off

00:15:08 ◼   ► and just go vertically down and click and be sure.

00:15:11 ◼   ► But anyway, a trackball with a separate button

00:15:13 ◼   ► and a separate ball does have that advantage.

00:15:15 ◼   ► - Let's see, oh, next, right.

00:15:18 ◼   ► So I'd asked at the end of the last episode,

00:15:21 ◼   ► or towards the end of the last episode,

00:15:22 ◼   ► "Hey, what's the deal with Apple Sim?"

00:15:24 ◼   ► And I had asked kind of,

00:15:26 ◼   ► without having done any research on it,

00:15:28 ◼   ► ♪ Back in the back door ♪

00:15:29 ◼   ► Lady Winzy, who is a retail employee, weighed in on this and also provided the official

00:15:34 ◼   ► link which we'll put in the show notes.

00:15:36 ◼   ► I'm a retail employee.

00:15:37 ◼   ► AT&T is the only carrier that locks the SIM.

00:15:41 ◼   ► Verizon opted out of Apple SIM in its entirety, and you can swap SIMs.

00:15:46 ◼   ► So if you're going to get Verizon service, you have a completely segregated Verizon SIM.

00:15:54 ◼   ► And then if you want to use the Apple SIM, you can use T-Mobile and I believe Sprint

00:15:58 ◼   ► in AT&T, but the moment you engage AT&T, that SIM gets locked.

00:16:03 ◼   ► So she continues, "When AT&T is selected as the carrier, a pop-up warns you, but you can

00:16:07 ◼   ► always purchase an additional Apple SIM for $5."

00:16:10 ◼   ► Which I didn't know, and that's really cool.

00:16:13 ◼   ► And additionally, "A Verizon SIM is free at her store anyway, you just have to ask for

00:16:18 ◼   ► it."

00:16:19 ◼   ► All of that was extremely useful information.

00:16:20 ◼   ► I was very glad that Lady Wednesday reported it.

00:16:23 ◼   ► And like we said, we'll put a link to the official documentation in the show notes about

00:16:27 ◼   ► this does this set a new record for the cheapest thing you can buy in an Apple

00:16:31 ◼   ► store that might be I was gonna say it's cheaper than iPod socks and the the $10

00:16:36 ◼   ► magsafe adapter I just bought another one of those actually although if we're

00:16:41 ◼   ► gonna go by volume or weight it may still be more expensive that's true

00:16:46 ◼   ► these things are well they're not heavy by any means but they're heck a lot

00:16:49 ◼   ► heavier than one of the micro nano whatever Sims I always get them

00:16:52 ◼   ► backwards can you fold the $5 bill to be smaller than a sim I don't think you

00:16:56 ◼   ► I don't think so. Not these new Sims at least.

00:16:58 ◼   ► But anyway, that was extremely useful feedback, and there were some other people that wrote in as well.

00:17:02 ◼   ► And so thank you to everyone who provided some of that information.

00:17:06 ◼   ► But it sounds like, you know, obviously the easiest answer, which I don't know why I didn't even think of this,

00:17:11 ◼   ► and Nathan A reminded me in the chat room, just use the same darn Sims. Like, why not just do that?

00:17:16 ◼   ► It just completely escaped me. But anyway,

00:17:18 ◼   ► but if I weren't to use my existing Sims, I can use, I can

00:17:23 ◼   ► I can potentially get two Apple SIMs, one for AT&T, one for T-Mobile, and then a Verizon

00:17:29 ◼   ► SIM as well for, it looks like, maybe five extra dollars, which is a pretty slick setup.

00:17:36 ◼   ► Moving on, we got some feedback about domestic carriers, one by Chris Niles.

00:17:42 ◼   ► He said, "As a genius, the number of iPhone users I see for cellular issues are mostly

00:17:47 ◼   ► sprint, then T-Mobile and Verizon, and last AT&T, meaning that AT&T was the best of all.

00:17:55 ◼   ► This is from three different markets, he said, the Bay Area, Seattle, and Denver.

00:17:59 ◼   ► And then we got some really long feedback from someone who I believe wanted to remain

00:18:02 ◼   ► anonymous.

00:18:03 ◼   ► Which one, the signal strength one?

00:18:05 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

00:18:06 ◼   ► One of the points that a lot of people brought up, we were asking how you get such a good

00:18:08 ◼   ► signal inside Moscone or whatever, is they have indoor antennas that are just for the

00:18:13 ◼   ► people inside the building.

00:18:14 ◼   ► And so you're competing with only the people inside the building instead of everybody out

00:18:17 ◼   ► in San Francisco and the antenna is really close to you.

00:18:21 ◼   ► And the person who sent us the email about spectrum and stuff had some tips for like

00:18:25 ◼   ► switching to 3G when everyone else is on 4G because sometimes you just can't get the attention

00:18:29 ◼   ► like you can receive the signal plenty strong in like a stadium or something but your send

00:18:33 ◼   ► signal is bombarded by, is interfering with everyone else's send signal so if you switch

00:18:37 ◼   ► to 3G you might actually have a better experience.

00:18:40 ◼   ► That was a good letter but it was also very long and probably doesn't really fit into

00:18:45 ◼   ► follow-up.

00:18:46 ◼   ► And the next section of the follow-up here is all people telling us about why carriers

00:18:54 ◼   ► might have changed the way you buy phones, as opposed to a subsidized phone model where

00:18:59 ◼   ► you pay a certain amount for a phone, the carrier pays Apple the rest of the price of

00:19:03 ◼   ► the phone, and then you pay a monthly fee to pay back the subsidy, and then some going

00:19:07 ◼   ► with the model where there is no subsidy and basically the price of the phone is spread

00:19:13 ◼   ► out over the course of your bills.

00:19:15 ◼   ► And so Benjamin Glickman's got the first theory here.

00:19:18 ◼   ► Well, does he have the first one?

00:19:19 ◼   ► I think someone else.

00:19:20 ◼   ► Maybe someone moved it.

00:19:22 ◼   ► The first theory-- oh, here it is.

00:19:23 ◼   ► Derek, yeah.

00:19:24 ◼   ► Derek Beachy, yeah.

00:19:26 ◼   ► Derek from Veristablium, right?

00:19:27 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:19:29 ◼   ► This is the big thing that we're missing

00:19:30 ◼   ► is that the upfront cost for a big fancy expensive phone

00:19:34 ◼   ► is $0.

00:19:36 ◼   ► That it's not like, oh, well, I used

00:19:38 ◼   ► to be able to get the top of the line iPhone for $200

00:19:42 ◼   ► and then a monthly fee.

00:19:43 ◼   ► and now I'm going to realize the full giant cost

00:19:46 ◼   ► of the iPhone is actually like 700 or $800.

00:19:49 ◼   ► It's now that the cost of the phone is $0

00:19:52 ◼   ► because they just take whatever the cost of the phone is,

00:19:53 ◼   ► divide it by 12 or 24 and then add that to your bill.

00:19:56 ◼   ► And so it seems like from the customer's perspective,

00:19:59 ◼   ► it has the advantage of being like,

00:20:00 ◼   ► "Oh, you know, every phone is a free phone now."

00:20:03 ◼   ► Even though you're paying the exact same money

00:20:05 ◼   ► or possibly more, it's just spread out

00:20:07 ◼   ► into your various bills.

00:20:09 ◼   ► There are a lot of theories that this will increase,

00:20:13 ◼   ► upgrade frequency because you get the same monthly payment.

00:20:16 ◼   ► And I mean, this kind of goes against what Marco was saying.

00:20:18 ◼   ► It was like, these thing where you spread out the cost

00:20:21 ◼   ► of the phone over multiple months will end.

00:20:23 ◼   ► And when it ends, you don't have to pay

00:20:25 ◼   ► for the phone anymore.

00:20:26 ◼   ► And so one side of this coin is,

00:20:27 ◼   ► oh, well then people will just keep upgrading their phone

00:20:29 ◼   ► as soon as the payment ends.

00:20:30 ◼   ► And the other side of the coin is what Marco was saying,

00:20:32 ◼   ► people will be like, oh, my bill decreased

00:20:33 ◼   ► and my phone is still good.

00:20:34 ◼   ► So why would I get a new phone?

00:20:36 ◼   ► So I don't know which one of those behaviors

00:20:37 ◼   ► is gonna win out when people start signing up

00:20:40 ◼   ► for these things.

00:20:41 ◼   ► Presumably the entire rest of the world knows

00:20:42 ◼   ► because as stated on the past show,

00:20:44 ◼   ► this is how a lot of the rest of the world

00:20:46 ◼   ► pays for the phones already.

00:20:48 ◼   ► But there are two sides to that coin.

00:20:49 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'll be interesting to see

00:20:52 ◼   ► whether more people now will choose

00:20:54 ◼   ► the bigger storage tiers based on this new pricing.

00:20:59 ◼   ► And if anything, this gives Apple even less of a reason

00:21:03 ◼   ► to drop the 16 gig because now it's even easier

00:21:06 ◼   ► for people to spend more money on the higher models.

00:21:08 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:21:11 ◼   ► That's roughly my opinion of that as well.

00:21:13 ◼   ► - Jeffrey says the new plans cost significantly more

00:21:15 ◼   ► for less, as in the carriers are going to charge you more

00:21:18 ◼   ► for the similar size plan and you either won't notice

00:21:21 ◼   ► or won't care because they'll be adding the phone price

00:21:23 ◼   ► into it and it'll just be all confusing.

00:21:25 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's like are the rates actually going down

00:21:28 ◼   ► without the subsidy?

00:21:29 ◼   ► If I buy my phone outright, just get it unlocked

00:21:31 ◼   ► or whatever and then own it outright,

00:21:33 ◼   ► am I actually gonna be paying a lower bill

00:21:35 ◼   ► after moving to this system?

00:21:37 ◼   ► I tried to find this out on AT&T's site

00:21:39 ◼   ► and it's very confusing and I couldn't figure it out.

00:21:41 ◼   ► But as far as I can tell,

00:21:42 ◼   ► I'm actually not gonna be paying any less money on the bill.

00:21:45 ◼   ► - You have to have a big spreadsheet and keep it up to date

00:21:48 ◼   ► because they change the numbers all the time.

00:21:49 ◼   ► You can get special deals

00:21:50 ◼   ► depending on where you're coming from.

00:21:51 ◼   ► You just have to keep redoing the math.

00:21:53 ◼   ► Like, has it ever been cheaper to buy an unlocked phone

00:21:55 ◼   ► and then pay a monthly fee?

00:21:57 ◼   ► Is it, you know, which is cheaper?

00:21:59 ◼   ► If they'd still done the subsidy

00:22:00 ◼   ► or if they just take the price of the phone

00:22:01 ◼   ► and divide it by 12 or 24 and add it to your bill,

00:22:03 ◼   ► what bill are they adding it to?

00:22:05 ◼   ► Is it the bill they're adding it to

00:22:06 ◼   ► bigger than it was before so the total comes out?

00:22:07 ◼   ► you just gotta do the math yourself.

00:22:09 ◼   ► At the bottom, here's the bottom line

00:22:10 ◼   ► with all this stuff in the US anyway.

00:22:12 ◼   ► What are you gonna do about it?

00:22:13 ◼   ► You got like two, three choices if you're lucky.

00:22:17 ◼   ► One of those choices is probably super crappy,

00:22:18 ◼   ► so really you've narrowed it down to two.

00:22:20 ◼   ► And like the amount of sort of unspoken collusion

00:22:24 ◼   ► in these industries and the huge barriers to entry mean

00:22:26 ◼   ► that there's very little connection

00:22:27 ◼   ► between the value of the service you're getting

00:22:29 ◼   ► and how much money you pay,

00:22:30 ◼   ► and so we're just, we're all screwed.

00:22:32 ◼   ► So like worrying about this is, it's almost academic.

00:22:37 ◼   ► Aaron E has another theory about this thing.

00:22:40 ◼   ► It was, he says it's primarily motivated by the FCC

00:22:43 ◼   ► that was pressuring cell phone companies

00:22:44 ◼   ► to get rid of their early termination fees

00:22:46 ◼   ► because they had really high fees

00:22:47 ◼   ► for like if you bail on your contract early.

00:22:49 ◼   ► And so the cell phone, this theory is

00:22:51 ◼   ► the cell phone company's way around this is,

00:22:52 ◼   ► all right, we won't have early termination fees anymore.

00:22:55 ◼   ► What we'll do is we'll give you a phone for $0

00:22:58 ◼   ► and we're essentially loaning you the rest of the money

00:23:00 ◼   ► for the phone that you will slowly pay back

00:23:01 ◼   ► over the course of your plan.

00:23:02 ◼   ► But if you bail early,

00:23:04 ◼   ► of course you have to give us back the money

00:23:05 ◼   ► we loaned you to buy your $800 phone.

00:23:08 ◼   ► So instead of an early termination fee,

00:23:09 ◼   ► it's like, oh, and by the way, you gotta pay us,

00:23:11 ◼   ► it's like a loan, and then you sort of exit the contract,

00:23:14 ◼   ► and it's like, well, you gotta pay back the loan

00:23:16 ◼   ► 'cause you've been using the phone, you've got the phone.

00:23:18 ◼   ► So that's their way of getting around

00:23:19 ◼   ► the early termination fee while still making sure

00:23:21 ◼   ► that if you leave the plan early,

00:23:22 ◼   ► you gotta pay a whole bunch of money to them,

00:23:24 ◼   ► which motivates you to stay.

00:23:25 ◼   ► We have a bunch of links to various FCC complaints

00:23:29 ◼   ► and things related to this for the show notes.

00:23:32 ◼   ► - Our first sponsor this week is Fracture.

00:23:35 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com and use promo code ATP15 for 15% off your first order.

00:23:43 ◼   ► Now Fracture prints photos in vivid color directly on glass.

00:23:48 ◼   ► We all have all these photos that we take these days with these awesome phone cameras

00:23:52 ◼   ► or my crazy new camera, whatever the case may be.

00:23:54 ◼   ► We all have lots of photos these days.

00:23:56 ◼   ► There's more photos than ever.

00:23:57 ◼   ► People are taking more photos than ever and that's really, really good.

00:23:59 ◼   ► The problem is that back in the old days you'd get photos printed and then you'd have this

00:24:04 ◼   ► this physical artifact and you could store it away somewhere,

00:24:07 ◼   ► you could display it, you could flip through,

00:24:09 ◼   ► you could show it, you could see it more often.

00:24:10 ◼   ► Nowadays, we have more pictures than ever,

00:24:13 ◼   ► but we look at them less than ever

00:24:16 ◼   ► because they're all just buried in our camera roll

00:24:18 ◼   ► or they're put on social things

00:24:19 ◼   ► and then they just kind of fall off the timeline,

00:24:21 ◼   ► we never see them again.

00:24:22 ◼   ► I think we really need to take advantage of things

00:24:24 ◼   ► that can take our pictures and show them back to us

00:24:27 ◼   ► or display them or let us share them with our loved ones

00:24:30 ◼   ► in a less fleeting way than just posting it

00:24:33 ◼   ► on Facebook or whatever.

00:24:34 ◼   ► So, Fracture lets you print photos.

00:24:37 ◼   ► And this is like the most modern kind of print

00:24:40 ◼   ► I've ever seen.

00:24:41 ◼   ► Photos that are printed on a glass surface.

00:24:44 ◼   ► So you have this nice thin lightweight piece of glass.

00:24:46 ◼   ► The ink is on the backside of it, but it's so thin

00:24:48 ◼   ► it looks like it's right on the surface.

00:24:50 ◼   ► And then there's like a thin layer of foam board

00:24:52 ◼   ► behind that so the foam board can then hook onto

00:24:55 ◼   ► a picture hanger or it can stand up on your desk

00:24:57 ◼   ► for the smaller sizes.

00:24:58 ◼   ► They have like a desk mount option

00:24:59 ◼   ► or like a desk stand option.

00:25:01 ◼   ► But for the most part, I get the big ones

00:25:02 ◼   ► and I hang them on little photo nails.

00:25:05 ◼   ► And they're huge and they're beautiful and they're light.

00:25:08 ◼   ► So it is like no stress to put this thing on your wall.

00:25:12 ◼   ► And they also have small ones too,

00:25:13 ◼   ► and the small ones are really affordable.

00:25:15 ◼   ► I actually, I have a number of the small ones as well.

00:25:18 ◼   ► They have small squares that start at five by five inches

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00:25:29 ◼   ► And these things look fantastic.

00:25:31 ◼   ► They also make great gifts.

00:25:33 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com, use promo code ATP15

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00:25:42 ◼   ► These are real vivid photos printed directly on glass.

00:25:45 ◼   ► The quality is great, they look great.

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00:25:52 ◼   ► Fractureme.com, code ATP15.

00:25:55 ◼   ► Thanks a lot.

00:25:56 ◼   ► - I'm glad I kept forgetting to make the fracture

00:25:58 ◼   ► order I wanted to do.

00:25:59 ◼   ► I decided I'm gonna, since I don't have app icons

00:26:01 ◼   ► upon a wall like Marco, I figure I can put up the logos of all the podcasts that I've

00:26:05 ◼   ► been on or associated with in some substantial way, and to make fractures of all those in

00:26:10 ◼   ► line up, but I kept forgetting to do the others, and now I'll use our code.

00:26:13 ◼   ► Although I haven't decided what size I'm going to get.

00:26:15 ◼   ► What size are your icons?

00:26:16 ◼   ► >> If you have the little one that we made of us in the Mac World Studio, that's 5x5.

00:26:20 ◼   ► >> Yeah, I know, it looks kind of small in my wall, I don't know if I -- well, it depends

00:26:23 ◼   ► on how many icons there are.

00:26:25 ◼   ► I gathered up all the high-res artwork from all the people who are associated with the

00:26:28 ◼   ► shows who would have access to that. So I think I have, I can go a little bit bigger,

00:26:32 ◼   ► but I don't know. Yeah, it depends on like your viewing distance too, you know, where

00:26:34 ◼   ► you're putting them and everything. Yep. But yeah, it's, it's great. All right, moving

00:26:38 ◼   ► on. What's next? It's notebooked Xeons, which is something I could not possibly care less

00:26:45 ◼   ► about, but I know you too. Oh no, that's not true. You should care. Everyone should care

00:26:49 ◼   ► about this. All right, tell me why. Tell me why. Well, so the announcement is another

00:26:54 ◼   ► one of these Intel half announcements where they're like, they announced that they're

00:26:58 ◼   ► going to make Xeons with power specs so they can go in notebooks, but they don't have

00:27:03 ◼   ► all the details on them quite yet. Kind of like how they announced all the Skylake stuff,

00:27:06 ◼   ► but you have to wait for IDF for all the details. Anyway.

00:27:10 ◼   ► Intel is so good at half-assed announcements.

00:27:12 ◼   ► Yeah, I don't know. I don't know why they do that. But anyway, we'll find out when

00:27:15 ◼   ► we find out. But we know enough. I think we know enough to be kind of excited. And it's

00:27:20 ◼   ► kind of exciting to dumbwigs. We talked about it in the past. What is the difference between

00:27:23 ◼   ► a Xeon and the rest of the Intel chips? And there's things to be said about, well, like

00:27:27 ◼   ► more conservative and they're lagging behind the other things and maybe they give you the

00:27:32 ◼   ► ones that are, you know, that have fewer manufacturing defects or something like you can do this

00:27:38 ◼   ► hand wavy camera like these are the fancy expensive ones but the things that count are

00:27:42 ◼   ► they spec them out with way more PCI Express lanes which is why they can go in the MacPro

00:27:47 ◼   ► perhaps not for the Xeons in the notebooks but that remains to be seen and the second

00:27:52 ◼   ► big thing is that they have ECC RAM and can usually support more RAM and those two things

00:27:57 ◼   ► I think are super important.

00:27:59 ◼   ► In Apple's "pro laptops" you can get a pretty large amount of RAM.

00:28:04 ◼   ► Is it still just 16 or can you get 32 in the big one?

00:28:06 ◼   ► I forget.

00:28:07 ◼   ► I believe it's still 16, but I will double check.

00:28:08 ◼   ► That's correct.

00:28:09 ◼   ► Either way, by the standards of just a handful of years ago, a 16GB notebook is huge.

00:28:15 ◼   ► We keep putting more and more RAM in these things, and the error rates surrounding RAM,

00:28:21 ◼   ► maybe they're getting better, but probably not as fast as RAM capacity is increasing.

00:28:24 ◼   ► It's kind of like data integrity on the file system, where we keep getting bigger and bigger

00:28:29 ◼   ► disks, but the error rate for the things we're storing them on aren't getting that much better,

00:28:33 ◼   ► or not getting it better or faster, or in some cases might even be getting worse.

00:28:36 ◼   ► And so if we have all these bits and the error rate is one in a million bits or one in a

00:28:40 ◼   ► billion bits and we have like, you know, millions and millions and billions and billions of

00:28:43 ◼   ► bits, that means you've got errors there.

00:28:45 ◼   ► And so ECC RAM is RAM that checks for hardware faults that cause a bit to flip here and there,

00:28:53 ◼   ► it can fix some kinds of errors and at least report the other kind.

00:28:57 ◼   ► And that's one of the reasons I've always loved the Mac Pros, because they all come

00:29:01 ◼   ► with ECC RAM, which is more expensive, but I mean, again, maybe it's voodoo.

00:29:05 ◼   ► I think people have done some studies on this, on ECC RAM actually is a benefit, but it just

00:29:09 ◼   ► seems like the hardware cost of ECC RAM is not the big of a deal, but Intel has always

00:29:13 ◼   ► segmented its product line by saying, "Oh, only our fancy Pro chips get ECC."

00:29:18 ◼   ► And so if Intel is going to be stubborn and they're not going to bring ECC RAM down to

00:29:21 ◼   ► to their consumer chips, the next best thing is to say,

00:29:25 ◼   ► fine, we'll make notebook chips with the Xeon feature set.

00:29:28 ◼   ► So again, we don't know if they have more PCI express lanes.

00:29:31 ◼   ► We don't know if they're like the higher quality processors

00:29:34 ◼   ► or the ones with the, you know,

00:29:35 ◼   ► a more conservative manufacturing processor or whatever.

00:29:38 ◼   ► We do know they're gonna have ECC RAM

00:29:40 ◼   ► and they can support up to 64 gigs of RAM.

00:29:42 ◼   ► And who wouldn't want a 15 inch Mac Pro

00:29:46 ◼   ► with 64 gigs of ECC RAM?

00:29:48 ◼   ► That sounds like an awesome machine to me.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Finally, that sounds like, I mean, you know,

00:29:52 ◼   ► going back to the old 17 inch days,

00:29:53 ◼   ► that sounds like a truly pro MacBook Pro,

00:29:57 ◼   ► as opposed to just like, well, it's a MacBook,

00:29:59 ◼   ► but it's a little bit bigger and fancier,

00:30:00 ◼   ► especially now that they're all aluminum and everything.

00:30:02 ◼   ► So I have no idea if Apple will even use these things.

00:30:05 ◼   ► Oh, and the other thing they advertise

00:30:06 ◼   ► is that it's coming with Thunderbolt 3,

00:30:07 ◼   ► but so do the desktop ones.

00:30:09 ◼   ► It's just a question of whether they have Thunderbolt 3

00:30:11 ◼   ► integrated into the controller for it,

00:30:13 ◼   ► or is it just like you have to buy the controller chip

00:30:15 ◼   ► if you get the Xeons in their chipset?

00:30:17 ◼   ► But anyway, I don't know if Apple will use these.

00:30:20 ◼   ► I don't know if they're worth using,

00:30:21 ◼   ► this first generation of things,

00:30:22 ◼   ► but I like the idea of ECC RAM and more RAM capacity

00:30:27 ◼   ► come to Apple's Pro Notebook line.

00:30:29 ◼   ► So fingers crossed.

00:30:30 ◼   ► - Yeah, it'll be interesting to see what happens.

00:30:32 ◼   ► I mean, what they announced,

00:30:34 ◼   ► I believe it's only gonna be the Xeon E3 line,

00:30:37 ◼   ► and the E3s are even closer than usual Xeons.

00:30:42 ◼   ► They're even closer to the consumer line.

00:30:45 ◼   ► They don't have extra PCI Express lanes.

00:30:48 ◼   ► They do support ECC, as you said.

00:30:50 ◼   ► They do support the higher RAM counts on certain chipsets.

00:30:53 ◼   ► Our tipster in the chat room is basically on fire right now

00:30:57 ◼   ► because he's saying that you can get ECC

00:30:59 ◼   ► on the consumer chips as well.

00:31:00 ◼   ► I don't know about that.

00:31:01 ◼   ► We'll find out.

00:31:02 ◼   ► But the Xeon name on the E3 line doesn't mean much.

00:31:06 ◼   ► - Yeah, it's all marketing segmentation anyway.

00:31:09 ◼   ► But fine, if you wanna do this marketing segmentation,

00:31:11 ◼   ► I don't care what it's called.

00:31:12 ◼   ► All I want is a laptop with ECC RAM

00:31:14 ◼   ► because it's crazy to have 16 gigs of non-ECC RAM

00:31:17 ◼   ► in a supposedly pro thing.

00:31:18 ◼   ► And I think that the laptop should go up higher RAM.

00:31:21 ◼   ► I'm not saying Apple's gonna sell one with 64 gigs,

00:31:23 ◼   ► but maybe they could sell one with 32

00:31:25 ◼   ► with the super expensive top of the line.

00:31:26 ◼   ► Like I think people would buy that

00:31:27 ◼   ► because it's especially now that the laptop CPUs

00:31:30 ◼   ► are practically as fast and sometimes faster

00:31:32 ◼   ► and single threaded than some of the, you know,

00:31:34 ◼   ► supposed pro CPUs from years past.

00:31:37 ◼   ► That if you have a top of the line 15 inch laptop

00:31:40 ◼   ► and you can just put more RAM in it,

00:31:41 ◼   ► you could probably do some pretty amazing things

00:31:43 ◼   ► with that on the road.

00:31:44 ◼   ► So whether it's just a silly marketing thing

00:31:49 ◼   ► and whether the E3s are not all they're cracking up to be,

00:31:51 ◼   ► you don't get any extra PCI express lanes

00:31:53 ◼   ► and Thunderbolt 3 is available everywhere anyway

00:31:55 ◼   ► and you could just buy a different controller chip set

00:31:57 ◼   ► to get ECC RAM on the desktops.

00:31:58 ◼   ► The bottom line is Apple hasn't done that.

00:32:00 ◼   ► They continue to sell their laptops,

00:32:01 ◼   ► even their super top of the line ones without ECC RAM.

00:32:04 ◼   ► And maybe this will change that

00:32:05 ◼   ► because maybe they'll have a nice can solution from Intel

00:32:07 ◼   ► that won't require them to get some different extra chip

00:32:12 ◼   ► to make their RAM ECC.

00:32:13 ◼   ► On the other end, the Xeon line is always really holding back

00:32:18 ◼   ► what the Mac Pro can do with things like ports

00:32:21 ◼   ► and chipsets and everything else,

00:32:22 ◼   ► because the Mac Pro uses the higher class of Xeons,

00:32:25 ◼   ► the E5 series, and with the extra PCI lanes

00:32:29 ◼   ► and a couple other things,

00:32:30 ◼   ► and those tend to lie behind in chipsets.

00:32:32 ◼   ► I don't know, do the E3s use more consumer-y chipsets?

00:32:37 ◼   ► Because it always holds back the Mac Pro

00:32:39 ◼   ► with things like how soon it can support Thunderbolt

00:32:42 ◼   ► or USB 3, or whatever new port specs come around.

00:32:47 ◼   ► The Mac Pro is always the last thing to get that support

00:32:49 ◼   ► because Intel's Xeon chipsets that support the Xeon CPUs

00:32:54 ◼   ► at that level, they just lag so far behind

00:32:56 ◼   ► the consumer stuff.

00:32:57 ◼   ► - And they don't need to because they're gonna go

00:32:59 ◼   ► in servers and no one needs Thunderbolt 3 ports

00:33:02 ◼   ► on a rack server somewhere, you know?

00:33:04 ◼   ► - Exactly, and so why would Apple want to tie another one

00:33:08 ◼   ► of their product lines to the delayed chipset

00:33:13 ◼   ► and platform support of the Intel Xeon line?

00:33:15 ◼   ► - Well, you know, if it's the same as PCI Express,

00:33:19 ◼   ► this doesn't make a difference there,

00:33:20 ◼   ► but I think the ECC RAM is the thing.

00:33:22 ◼   ► The ADB tipster says that you could get ECC

00:33:24 ◼   ► on the desktop things, but not on mobile,

00:33:25 ◼   ► so this is a first for Intel,

00:33:27 ◼   ► or a first in recent history that you can get

00:33:31 ◼   ► laptop chip from Intel with the ECC RAM support.

00:33:34 ◼   ► I just think it's, like Data Integrator,

00:33:36 ◼   ► it's like, it should be everywhere.

00:33:37 ◼   ► It should be, all RAM should be ECC RAM.

00:33:40 ◼   ► If it was spread across the entire industry,

00:33:42 ◼   ► the small additional cost of making the actual RAM chips

00:33:45 ◼   ► support ECC and all the controllers and everything,

00:33:47 ◼   ► doesn't seem like that big a deal to me.

00:33:49 ◼   ► And I think it's like, it's literally the least we can do

00:33:52 ◼   ► as we add a ridiculous number of bits

00:33:55 ◼   ► to all of our machines and the RAM category

00:34:00 ◼   ► that we're just not, we're just like,

00:34:02 ◼   ► well, I'm sure it'll be fine.

00:34:03 ◼   ► I'm sure every single one of the bazillion bits

00:34:05 ◼   ► that we send through this thing

00:34:06 ◼   ► always come back exactly as we did it. And a couple small one-bit errors here and there.

00:34:10 ◼   ► You can get kernel packs, you can get corrupted data, you can get everything. Like, if you

00:34:13 ◼   ► can't trust your RAM, what can you trust? Not your file system. Yeah, forget that. Is

00:34:19 ◼   ► this really going to trickle down to anything that I'm going to buy anytime soon? No, you

00:34:24 ◼   ► just got a new laptop. Well, no, Work got a new laptop. I didn't. I have, I would say,

00:34:29 ◼   ► what do you think the actual odds of Apple using any of these chips at all ever in any

00:34:33 ◼   ► of its products. Like I think even that is maybe 50/50. I think low. I'm gonna give it 50/50 because

00:34:38 ◼   ► I hold out hope that someone is like, "You know what? We could sell a laptop for way more money

00:34:43 ◼   ► than we do now if we just position one as like the suit." But that's what they used to do with

00:34:46 ◼   ► the 17-inch. It was like, it's like, "Well, this is barely a laptop, but certain people need it,

00:34:51 ◼   ► so we're gonna charge them an arm and a leg and here you go." There should be one of those,

00:34:55 ◼   ► shouldn't there? Just like the Mac Pro? Yeah, 4K screen. Sure. Why not? 21-inch laptop, go.

00:35:01 ◼   ► PowerBook G5, we are ready finally.

00:35:04 ◼   ► - Liquid cooling.

00:35:05 ◼   ► - Oh God.

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00:37:59 ◼   ► Thanks a lot. So I have an announcement to make. ATP is now numbers. We've now bought

00:38:06 ◼   ► all numbers. Apple would sue us for that name. You've got to think of it. I know you have

00:38:09 ◼   ► difficulty with the names. I'm not surprised you came up with numbers. Integers. We are

00:38:14 ◼   ► buying all the integers. Oh my goodness. Yeah, we couldn't get integers.com or the integer

00:38:17 ◼   ► Twitter handle so we're just gonna go with the integer with it with a lowercase L inside

00:38:21 ◼   ► of the I.

00:38:22 ◼   ► Where we're going in the clouds it doesn't matter whether we can't get the Twitter handle.

00:38:26 ◼   ► We'll just buy Twitter and we'll make it integer number 45.

00:38:29 ◼   ► This is getting bad quickly.

00:38:30 ◼   ► So to summarize this news, I don't know if it's even possible, it just sounds so stupid

00:38:34 ◼   ► when you say it out loud, Google decided to rename itself Alphabet and then make and then

00:38:43 ◼   ► divide up its businesses, divide up all the things that Google did before.

00:38:46 ◼   ► Some of the things that Google did before are going to be under a new subsidiary of

00:38:51 ◼   ► Alphabet called Google, and that's going to be like search and Android and web ads and

00:38:57 ◼   ► I don't know what the heck goes under that.

00:38:59 ◼   ► And then a bunch of the other stuff that Google does is going to go under someplace else?

00:39:05 ◼   ► Just directly under Alphabet?

00:39:06 ◼   ► I forget, but anyway, it's not under Google anymore.

00:39:07 ◼   ► It will be all that stuff they do with self-driving cars and giant balloons with Wi-Fi access

00:39:14 ◼   ► points on them and biomedical stuff and contact lenses that check your glucose level and Google

00:39:19 ◼   ► does a lot of weird stuff like a lot of sort of R&D type stuff and so this is this is a

00:39:23 ◼   ► reorganization under a new name Alphabet that is just that is saying like within alphabet

00:39:29 ◼   ► which is still the company the same company that Google was they're dividing up their

00:39:32 ◼   ► businesses in different bins the super confusing part is that their stock symbol will still

00:39:36 ◼   ► be G O O G on whatever that is NASDAQ or whatever like their stock symbols will still look like

00:39:40 ◼   ► Goog or Google or whatever, but the name of the company will be Alphabet and Google will

00:39:45 ◼   ► just be a subsidiary, a wholly owned subsidiary of Alphabet. Larry and Sergey, I don't know

00:39:50 ◼   ► how to pronounce his name, are staying in charge of everything, but now they're in charge

00:39:55 ◼   ► of Alphabet and they appointed a new CEO of the Google part of Alphabet. It's not the

00:40:00 ◼   ► same guy who did Google+, right?

00:40:01 ◼   ► >> No, it's Sundar Pichai, I hope I'm pronouncing that correctly, and the guy who did Google+

00:40:07 ◼   ► left, right? Wasn't that…

00:40:08 ◼   ► Yeah, I can't keep track of the drama involved in this, but…

00:40:12 ◼   ► Anyway, he left. And so Sundar, from what I understand, everyone likes Sundar a lot.

00:40:19 ◼   ► Yeah, he's good. I think I've seen him in presentations. He always seems like he's

00:40:23 ◼   ► a good presenter anyway. I have no idea. Nothing about him except seeing him on stage at I/O,

00:40:28 ◼   ► I think. Yeah. So, I don't know. I mean, to me, you

00:40:31 ◼   ► look at this move, and first of all, it's odd, and it's kind of like Head in the Clouds

00:40:38 ◼   ► kind of spacey, new age, Larry Sergey type stuff.

00:40:42 ◼   ► - Is it spacey?

00:40:44 ◼   ► Is the name spacey?

00:40:45 ◼   ► 'Cause I think the actual move,

00:40:46 ◼   ► despite being super confusing,

00:40:48 ◼   ► is less head in the clouds-y

00:40:50 ◼   ► because it's finally recognizing

00:40:51 ◼   ► that this company called Google does two kinds of things.

00:40:56 ◼   ► Crazy things like self-driving cars

00:40:58 ◼   ► and hot air balloons and all that stuff,

00:41:01 ◼   ► like just maybe they're good ideas,

00:41:02 ◼   ► maybe there'll be dead ends,

00:41:03 ◼   ► like kind of free-wheeling research,

00:41:07 ◼   ► you never know what's gonna hit or whatever.

00:41:09 ◼   ► And then very solid, predictable,

00:41:11 ◼   ► same business that Google's been doing forever

00:41:13 ◼   ► with the web ads and the search and all that other stuff.

00:41:15 ◼   ► And having them both under the umbrella of the same company,

00:41:19 ◼   ► that I think is more kind of hippy dippy,

00:41:21 ◼   ► head in the clouds, like we're just like a company,

00:41:24 ◼   ► we're just like we have a campus and you play volleyball

00:41:26 ◼   ► and we give you free food.

00:41:27 ◼   ► And some people try to figure out how to monetize web ads

00:41:30 ◼   ► and other people are trying to figure out

00:41:32 ◼   ► how to save the world one whatever at a time.

00:41:34 ◼   ► And we're all in the same family.

00:41:36 ◼   ► It's like, how would you feel if your job was doing analytics

00:41:39 ◼   ► on like keyword search, return on investment,

00:41:42 ◼   ► and someone else's job was like self-driving cars

00:41:46 ◼   ► or something?

00:41:47 ◼   ► Is that really the same company you're

00:41:49 ◼   ► recruiting for that company just the same way across the board?

00:41:51 ◼   ► So I think it is a little bit more concrete

00:41:54 ◼   ► and a little bit more down to earth to say,

00:41:56 ◼   ► we really need to divvy this stuff up

00:41:58 ◼   ► so it's clear who's working for what and what the goals are.

00:42:02 ◼   ► And then Google can be Google.

00:42:03 ◼   ► And then everything else can be its own thing.

00:42:06 ◼   ► and we don't have to mix them together.

00:42:08 ◼   ► I don't know all the financial implications,

00:42:09 ◼   ► like does it help them with reporting,

00:42:10 ◼   ► does it help them with hiding profits and losses

00:42:13 ◼   ► and making themselves look better,

00:42:14 ◼   ► and not having the crazy, it's like Alphabet

00:42:16 ◼   ► or whatever they, I wish I knew.

00:42:19 ◼   ► I read all these press releases

00:42:20 ◼   ► and I've already forgotten 'cause it was too long ago.

00:42:22 ◼   ► It was only a couple days, but.

00:42:24 ◼   ► Is all the new research and stuff

00:42:25 ◼   ► under just plain old Alphabet

00:42:26 ◼   ► or do they make another subcompany?

00:42:28 ◼   ► I think it's just under Alphabet.

00:42:29 ◼   ► - And there's X, there's like the X Labs, whatever.

00:42:32 ◼   ► - Yeah, but those things are basically cost centers.

00:42:35 ◼   ► And those don't look good on Google's balance sheet, right?

00:42:38 ◼   ► So if you can get them off into another subsidiary,

00:42:40 ◼   ► then you can kind of do more hand-wavy stuff.

00:42:42 ◼   ► - Well, yeah, 'cause what's interesting is

00:42:44 ◼   ► they didn't spin out things like YouTube or Android

00:42:47 ◼   ► out of the new division called Google.

00:42:50 ◼   ► - That fits with Google, don't you think?

00:42:52 ◼   ► YouTube is a fairly concrete, established thing.

00:42:55 ◼   ► It is not like glucose-sensing contact lenses.

00:42:59 ◼   ► - But so is Nest, and Nest is spun out.

00:43:02 ◼   ► - Yeah, but Nest is still kind of like,

00:43:04 ◼   ► Can you make money selling nerds a really expensive smoke alarm that goes

00:43:09 ◼   ► off at the wrong time? You know to me whenever you see a company like like

00:43:14 ◼   ► Google which which has they have a spotty record of BS and their

00:43:20 ◼   ► statements let's say that I mean it's not they're not they're not totally

00:43:23 ◼   ► awful but they're not perfect either and Apple does a lot of their own BS - I'm

00:43:27 ◼   ► not trying to be all like you know weird about it here but this is the kind of

00:43:31 ◼   ► thing that it's worth sniffing around to see, is there a cynical take on this that is plausible

00:43:38 ◼   ► for why else they might have done it? And because there's so much floaty language here

00:43:44 ◼   ► and the cynical take is, what you said, is it sure looks like they're moving a lot of

00:43:50 ◼   ► cost centers out of Google and leaving Google, the thing that is named Google, now as a more

00:43:58 ◼   ► focused and most likely more profitable kind of entity.

00:44:01 ◼   ► That's not cynical.

00:44:02 ◼   ► Isn't that just good business?

00:44:04 ◼   ► Isn't that kind of like not letting the two things like, they're just, it just seemed

00:44:08 ◼   ► very different culturally and what their goals are and what their priorities should be and

00:44:12 ◼   ► combining them into one thing just like confuses like they're separable enough because it's

00:44:17 ◼   ► not like, oh, we should spin off MacPaint and MacWrite into Claris.

00:44:21 ◼   ► Sorry to use old references for the young people listening.

00:44:24 ◼   ► Because that will let them, like that was a core competency of Apple.

00:44:27 ◼   ► that need to be spun out, but like hot air balloons, man?

00:44:30 ◼   ► Like that's not the same company, right?

00:44:33 ◼   ► So I think it's one of the things

00:44:35 ◼   ► that I've always admired about Google

00:44:37 ◼   ► is that they're willing to do all of these things.

00:44:39 ◼   ► Like people ding them for it.

00:44:40 ◼   ► It's like, what are you doing out there

00:44:41 ◼   ► trying to make these self-driving cars?

00:44:43 ◼   ► Like, if not them, then who, right?

00:44:45 ◼   ► You either have a bunch of smart people

00:44:46 ◼   ► that have a lot of money.

00:44:47 ◼   ► I'm glad they're trying to do these things.

00:44:49 ◼   ► And I think those projects will be given

00:44:52 ◼   ► kind of more air to breathe and be under less pressure

00:44:55 ◼   ► in a separate company.

00:44:56 ◼   ► And yes, the flip side of that is the other part

00:44:59 ◼   ► of the company will probably look more focused.

00:45:03 ◼   ► It's not like it looks more focused to investors.

00:45:05 ◼   ► You're still buying the stock in the big overall company.

00:45:07 ◼   ► I just think it's just better organizationally.

00:45:11 ◼   ► So I'm not like, I don't think there's any real

00:45:14 ◼   ► actual cynical interpretation of this

00:45:16 ◼   ► except for the one that I heard

00:45:17 ◼   ► which sounds like total BS to me is like

00:45:19 ◼   ► that Sundar was gonna leave and they were like,

00:45:20 ◼   ► oh, we better make them CEOs.

00:45:22 ◼   ► It just totally does not pass the smell test for me at all.

00:45:26 ◼   ► but this is gonna be like the stupidest reason ever

00:45:28 ◼   ► to reorganize this big giant company.

00:45:29 ◼   ► But everything else about it seems straightforward

00:45:33 ◼   ► and a reasonable thing to do.

00:45:35 ◼   ► I just really don't like the name, but I don't know.

00:45:37 ◼   ► Marco, what do you think?

00:45:39 ◼   ► - I mean, I'm with you for the most part.

00:45:41 ◼   ► Believe me, if there was an obvious cynical take on this,

00:45:45 ◼   ► I would be the one to make it,

00:45:47 ◼   ► and I don't think there is a clear one.

00:45:50 ◼   ► I mean, there is possibly the looking better

00:45:52 ◼   ► on the investment type of divisional stuff

00:45:55 ◼   ► that we don't know enough about to really talk about.

00:45:57 ◼   ► There is possible issues with taxation

00:45:59 ◼   ► that a lot of people have pointed out

00:46:01 ◼   ► that this might be like a tax dodge.

00:46:02 ◼   ► I think those are definitely gonna be benefits of it.

00:46:06 ◼   ► They probably were not the cause of it,

00:46:09 ◼   ► and they were probably not the driving thing

00:46:11 ◼   ► that drove this decision with them.

00:46:13 ◼   ► I think this actually is mostly about what they say it is.

00:46:18 ◼   ► I think this is actually something

00:46:20 ◼   ► that they're saying honestly,

00:46:23 ◼   ► 'cause you're right, it does make sense

00:46:24 ◼   ► organizationally to separate out these really,

00:46:27 ◼   ► really disparate things into their own divisions.

00:46:31 ◼   ► Things that have nothing to do with what else

00:46:33 ◼   ► the company is doing or have very little to do

00:46:35 ◼   ► with what else the company is doing.

00:46:37 ◼   ► It does make sense to separate those out.

00:46:39 ◼   ► That being said, this is all still Google.

00:46:43 ◼   ► It's putting a new name on it will have some

00:46:48 ◼   ► like PR distancing benefits to it,

00:46:51 ◼   ► kind of like the joke that is intellectual ventures

00:46:54 ◼   ► doing things through LOD-SYS.

00:46:56 ◼   ► You know, this is a thing that is created

00:47:00 ◼   ► to imply that there is artificial distance

00:47:04 ◼   ► or disconnection that isn't really there.

00:47:07 ◼   ► So this is really still the same people running it.

00:47:09 ◼   ► It's still the same company.

00:47:11 ◼   ► It's all, right now it's even installed

00:47:13 ◼   ► in the same buildings and everything

00:47:14 ◼   ► that are all labeled Google.

00:47:15 ◼   ► So this stuff is all still Google stuff.

00:47:18 ◼   ► So Nest was spun off from Google.

00:47:20 ◼   ► If you weren't comfortable with Google owning Nest

00:47:24 ◼   ► and having the data from your house

00:47:25 ◼   ► about your Nest thermostats,

00:47:27 ◼   ► if you weren't comfortable at that before,

00:47:29 ◼   ► you shouldn't be comfortable about it now either

00:47:31 ◼   ► because it's the same thing.

00:47:33 ◼   ► Like, it's all the same people,

00:47:34 ◼   ► so it's important to keep the perspective on this

00:47:38 ◼   ► that it's not like how AT&T was forced to split up

00:47:41 ◼   ► and they had to make actually separate companies.

00:47:44 ◼   ► This is like, no, this is still all the same people

00:47:48 ◼   ► all are working together, really.

00:47:51 ◼   ► They're just different divisions, but this is all still what we know as Google.

00:47:55 ◼   ► Maybe that's the one cynical take I heard.

00:47:57 ◼   ► I think it was from Horace Diddoo, or someone related to his conversation, maybe a commenter,

00:48:02 ◼   ► was basically like, "Google makes the money and sends it over to Alphabet, and Alphabet

00:48:09 ◼   ► takes the money from the Google part and feeds it back into Google data that it collects

00:48:14 ◼   ► from whatever crazy things it's doing, like scanning the entire Earth or every book in

00:48:19 ◼   ► existence or whatever.

00:48:20 ◼   ► So it's an exchange of money and data.

00:48:22 ◼   ► So it's all entirely, all in the family.

00:48:26 ◼   ► There's no wall being built between these two things.

00:48:28 ◼   ► It's just like, now we're getting to be free to have different reporting chains, different

00:48:32 ◼   ► cultures, different priorities in our meetings.

00:48:36 ◼   ► I imagine they can concentrate on what they're doing and not worry so much about what the

00:48:40 ◼   ► Google side of things are doing.

00:48:41 ◼   ► It becomes more like they can pretend within this little universe, the little Googleverse,

00:48:46 ◼   ► they can pretend they're two separate companies that communicate with each other like two

00:48:50 ◼   ► separate companies would, even though they really are the same company and they both

00:48:53 ◼   ► have the same boss who can just tell them what to do if they really want to.

00:48:55 ◼   ► But at this point in Google's history, I think the two founders still are exerting kind of

00:49:00 ◼   ► like personalized idiosyncratic control over the company that they founded.

00:49:07 ◼   ► They don't need any money.

00:49:08 ◼   ► They care about money only insofar as--

00:49:11 ◼   ► as far as I can tell--

00:49:12 ◼   ► only insofar as it helps them achieve whatever goals

00:49:14 ◼   ► they're trying to achieve.

00:49:15 ◼   ► So I am even more inclined not to believe

00:49:19 ◼   ► that it's some kind of clever financial maneuvering,

00:49:21 ◼   ► because really they just want, why

00:49:24 ◼   ► aren't we making better progress on our research projects?

00:49:26 ◼   ► And why is Google--

00:49:33 ◼   ► the Google proper distracted by all these researchy type

00:49:35 ◼   ► things?

00:49:36 ◼   ► really reorganized so both groups can better achieve their goals because that's what they

00:49:41 ◼   ► want to do as the founders of the company. I really don't think they're motivated, but

00:49:45 ◼   ► we could become even more rich. I mean, they're not Larry Ellison, right?

00:49:49 ◼   ► Hmm. Fair enough. It's funny. I was sitting here thinking to myself, "What are the different

00:49:56 ◼   ► stops on the journey from a dictatorial CEO that kind of does whatever and doesn't care

00:50:03 ◼   ► what anyone thinks, perhaps maybe like Jeff Bezos, Bezos, whatever, and somebody who just

00:50:09 ◼   ► toes the company line like probably every Hewlett-Packard CEO that's ever been. And

00:50:15 ◼   ► I feel like Larry and Sergey are no Jeff Bezos, but certainly closer to that side of the spectrum

00:50:23 ◼   ► than someone who just, you know, tries to get shareholders as much money as they possibly

00:50:29 ◼   ► can. And this seems to me like you guys are just saying, you know, let's try to reorganize

00:50:35 ◼   ► the company in a way that makes a little bit of sense, and let's try to remove any shackles,

00:50:40 ◼   ► perceived or real, that prevent us from doing this change the world kind of stuff that we

00:50:45 ◼   ► really want to be doing.

00:50:46 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think the line is, like, if you feel ownership of the company, if you were

00:50:52 ◼   ► one of the founders of the company, or at least were there super early, you feel like

00:50:56 ◼   ► have a right to just do whatever you want with the company. And investors be damned,

00:51:01 ◼   ► Wall Street be damned, obviously to some degree or another. A lot of times founders don't

00:51:05 ◼   ► have full control over the company, they lose control and so someone else, you know. But

00:51:09 ◼   ► if you're one of the early people, you're like, "This is my company, I do what I want

00:51:12 ◼   ► with it." But if the company has been around for hundreds and hundreds of years and you

00:51:15 ◼   ► are like the 17th CEO, it's harder to feel like you have the, that you should just be

00:51:22 ◼   ► like, "You know what? What do I want Google to be? I'm the CEO." Because the CEO in most

00:51:26 ◼   ► companies that have been around that long is beholden to a board of directors and they

00:51:29 ◼   ► don't have the control and they didn't put everybody on the board so they really aren't

00:51:32 ◼   ► in charge or whatever but as founders and founders who are wise and very carefully managed

00:51:38 ◼   ► to retain majority control over the company they founded they feel like this is my toy

00:51:42 ◼   ► this is my plaything I'm gonna do what I want with it and I think that's a great way to

00:51:45 ◼   ► run a company I hate the other way where they run a company where you're like the CEO is

00:51:50 ◼   ► like a steward for two or three years and whatever happens the company doesn't matter

00:51:54 ◼   ► as long as they get their golden parachute and their bonus and they go out and someone

00:51:57 ◼   ► else comes in and it's like completely rudderless, no actual leadership, short-term thinking,

00:52:05 ◼   ► but companies that are huge and have huge revenues and huge impact on all the people

00:52:09 ◼   ► around them and the people who buy their stuff and that's the worst.

00:52:12 ◼   ► So I fully endorse this modern style of ambitious, very strange, unconstrained, biconventional

00:52:22 ◼   ► thinking leadership of companies, even if in the end it ends up doing in some or all

00:52:27 ◼   ► these companies in the long term.

00:52:30 ◼   ► Apple so far I think is the only one that's in the second phase because its founder leader

00:52:35 ◼   ► is gone now and leadership has been passed over.

00:52:38 ◼   ► Does Tim Cook feel the same kind of ownership over Apple as Steve Jobs did?

00:52:41 ◼   ► Maybe not, but I think he's still doing the same kind of things.

00:52:44 ◼   ► What is Tim Cook like?

00:52:45 ◼   ► You know, the environment, human rights, diversity.

00:52:51 ◼   ► All those things that Steve Jobs was not,

00:52:53 ◼   ► Steve Jobs was not steering Apple in that direction,

00:52:57 ◼   ► at least not to the degree that Tim Cook is.

00:52:59 ◼   ► And so Tim Cook has put his stamp on Apple.

00:53:01 ◼   ► I feel like he is not embarrassed to do that,

00:53:05 ◼   ► or doesn't feel like it's not his right.

00:53:06 ◼   ► Maybe it's because he was there with Steve the whole time.

00:53:08 ◼   ► Anyway, we'll all be dead by the time Apple finally

00:53:12 ◼   ► is on its 17th CEO,

00:53:13 ◼   ► and that will probably be just a big mess.

00:53:15 ◼   ► But for now, Apple is still doing well in this area.

00:53:18 ◼   ► And I think this move by Google, aside from the name,

00:53:20 ◼   ► Marco, that's what I was asking before,

00:53:22 ◼   ► aside from this name, which I think is really terrible,

00:53:24 ◼   ► this move makes sense to me.

00:53:26 ◼   ► - It is an exceptionally bad name.

00:53:28 ◼   ► - You should call it the alphabet, right, Marco?

00:53:31 ◼   ► (laughing)

00:53:33 ◼   ► - Wow, yeah, that wouldn't have helped either.

00:53:35 ◼   ► - But like, who will ever say the word alphabet?

00:53:38 ◼   ► 'Cause like I said, even the stock symbol is goo.

00:53:39 ◼   ► We're just gonna, like,

00:53:40 ◼   ► I think we should all agree on the show,

00:53:42 ◼   ► not that we're like trying to be contrary

00:53:44 ◼   ► or being stubborn or whatever,

00:53:45 ◼   ► but I'm just gonna keep saying Google.

00:53:48 ◼   ► And I think most people are gonna keep,

00:53:49 ◼   ► even when we're talking about the self-driving cars,

00:53:51 ◼   ► it can be like Google self-driving cars.

00:53:52 ◼   ► Are people gonna say Alphabet self-driving cars?

00:53:55 ◼   ► I don't know if Google is really committed to,

00:53:57 ◼   ► or if it could even,

00:53:59 ◼   ► do the kind of rebranding necessary to turn,

00:54:02 ◼   ► God, I don't know this chain, but it was like,

00:54:04 ◼   ► AT&T, Atlantic Bell, like, you know,

00:54:09 ◼   ► you ever see the diagram of like chain of names

00:54:11 ◼   ► after AT&T was broken up, that eventually, you know,

00:54:14 ◼   ► we have these different other names

00:54:15 ◼   ► and they recombine into the monster that is Verizon

00:54:18 ◼   ► and the new AT&T and, yeah.

00:54:21 ◼   ► Anyway, that kind of rebranding usually only happens

00:54:24 ◼   ► when the previous name is so incredibly hated

00:54:26 ◼   ► that the value of it is zero or negative.

00:54:28 ◼   ► So you make up a new word and people are like,

00:54:31 ◼   ► well, I hated Bell Atlantic, but this Verizon company,

00:54:35 ◼   ► I've never heard of this.

00:54:36 ◼   ► Maybe they're better, I can't, I don't know.

00:54:37 ◼   ► - Singular is terrible.

00:54:39 ◼   ► - Yeah, but AT&T is pretty good, yeah, anyway.

00:54:41 ◼   ► - Do you know, I've heard some wonderful things

00:54:43 ◼   ► about Xfinity.

00:54:44 ◼   ► - Oh no, that's where people see the chain.

00:54:47 ◼   ► I guess people see the chain entirely.

00:54:49 ◼   ► But anyway, Google is a name that people like

00:54:51 ◼   ► that has positive value, that is a very strong brand,

00:54:54 ◼   ► and I don't see Alphabet ever eclipsing that.

00:54:57 ◼   ► And so I hope people just won't actually use that name

00:54:59 ◼   ► except in like official documentation

00:55:02 ◼   ► and like actual press releases

00:55:04 ◼   ► and people who have to be journalists.

00:55:05 ◼   ► But casually speaking, until it seems incorrect

00:55:10 ◼   ► based on common usage,

00:55:11 ◼   ► I'm just gonna keep saying Google for the whole thing.

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00:58:13 ◼   ► All right, so Marco you wrote a perhaps contentious,

00:58:18 ◼   ► but probably not really contentious post about ad blocking.

00:58:21 ◼   ► Would you like to tell us why you're such a jerk

00:58:23 ◼   ► and why you hate anyone who writes for the web?

00:58:26 ◼   ► - So this was interesting.

00:58:28 ◼   ► I wrote a post basically defending

00:58:30 ◼   ► modern day JavaScript blocking,

00:58:33 ◼   ► which will of course rule out many ads and many trackers.

00:58:36 ◼   ► I was actually really afraid to publish it

00:58:39 ◼   ► because I have so often published something

00:58:42 ◼   ► and had it blow up in a way I didn't really expect or want,

00:58:47 ◼   ► and really regretted it afterwards.

00:58:49 ◼   ► And this, in which I, as a fairly prominent voice

00:58:54 ◼   ► in some circles, am advocating basically

00:58:57 ◼   ► for many modern ad and tracking blockers,

00:59:00 ◼   ► I thought, knowing as many people as I do in publishing,

00:59:03 ◼   ► this could be a problem.

00:59:05 ◼   ► And so I showed it to a bunch of friends ahead of time.

00:59:08 ◼   ► - It was like five hours ahead of time.

00:59:10 ◼   ► By the time I saw your link to like,

00:59:12 ◼   ► "Okay, take a look at this, it was already posted for real."

00:59:14 ◼   ► So I'd say, "More lead time next time."

00:59:18 ◼   ► - Fair enough, I actually got direct feedback

00:59:20 ◼   ► from a few friends who read it faster than you did.

00:59:23 ◼   ► - I didn't see the link until much later.

00:59:26 ◼   ► - Well, whose fault is that?

00:59:28 ◼   ► - I am a Slack completionist in most of my channels,

00:59:31 ◼   ► so I did read it, but I should look at

00:59:33 ◼   ► what this time stamps are.

00:59:34 ◼   ► Anyway, it wasn't that long.

00:59:35 ◼   ► But yes, you did solicit.

00:59:36 ◼   ► I'm not a web publisher, so I can't give you

00:59:38 ◼   ► the feedback you're looking for anyway.

00:59:39 ◼   ► Or just tell you to pick different words.

00:59:41 ◼   ► - Right, right, right, so yeah, anyway.

00:59:44 ◼   ► So I actually really did kind of sanity check it

00:59:46 ◼   ► with some friends ahead of time

00:59:48 ◼   ► because I was afraid to say this.

00:59:51 ◼   ► And so the gist of my article here,

00:59:54 ◼   ► it's called The Ethics of Modern Web Ad Blocking,

00:59:57 ◼   ► and this is a lot of stuff that we actually talked about

01:00:00 ◼   ► on the show here in the past.

01:00:01 ◼   ► We have to be very careful with the web

01:00:03 ◼   ► because if you just follow a link,

01:00:06 ◼   ► then your browser will just load that page

01:00:08 ◼   ► and everything on it without giving you a chance

01:00:11 ◼   ► to kind of say, "Oh, you know what, no thanks.

01:00:13 ◼   ► "I don't agree with everything this page is trying to do."

01:00:16 ◼   ► You know, like, when you follow a link

01:00:18 ◼   ► that somebody sends you or that you,

01:00:20 ◼   ► or if you find in a search or whatever,

01:00:23 ◼   ► you load all the trackers, all the ads,

01:00:25 ◼   ► all the code that page wants you to execute,

01:00:27 ◼   ► you just load it and run it in your browser.

01:00:29 ◼   ► Like, that's just how modern browsers work.

01:00:31 ◼   ► All the collection of your data they're doing,

01:00:34 ◼   ► you know, if you find something on the page offensive

01:00:37 ◼   ► or if it's tracking you between multiple sites

01:00:39 ◼   ► through cross-site trackers like ad networks

01:00:41 ◼   ► and Google Analytics and stuff like that,

01:00:43 ◼   ► you're giving all that data up

01:00:45 ◼   ► without really being asked first.

01:00:47 ◼   ► Like they take the data and then you can maybe go

01:00:49 ◼   ► and try to disable it later.

01:00:51 ◼   ► (laughs)

01:00:52 ◼   ► And that whole model has been so abused

01:00:56 ◼   ► by web publishers and advertisers

01:00:57 ◼   ► and scammy and legitimate companies alike.

01:01:00 ◼   ► It has been so abused that now,

01:01:02 ◼   ► like everything you do on the web

01:01:04 ◼   ► is watched like a hawk tracked. You have massive privacy violations happening

01:01:09 ◼   ► constantly like and this this came to a head a few weeks ago. There was, you

01:01:14 ◼   ► know, not only the safaris, you know, I think, but then, like there was a people

01:01:17 ◼   ► calling out the verge for their and the verge calling out mobile web for sucking

01:01:22 ◼   ► and everyone's like well look at your page. It's full of like fifteen thousand

01:01:25 ◼   ► trackers and eight megs of javascript and all this stuff and and grouper

01:01:29 ◼   ► called out. I'm or for you know because they have great writers, but they have

01:01:32 ◼   ► a site that's full of these really crappy ads a lot of the time. And then Renee Ritchie

01:01:35 ◼   ► from IMAW wrote this post explaining about how basically how bad ad networks are and

01:01:39 ◼   ► how they kind of don't have much control over the matter. And so there was all this discussion

01:01:44 ◼   ► around this, but really what it comes down to is I think now in the same way that pop-up

01:01:50 ◼   ► ads got so crazy in the early 2000s that pop-up blockers became basically required usage and

01:01:58 ◼   ► then became integrated into the browsers themselves and turned on by default. My argument is that

01:02:04 ◼   ► now JavaScript tracking and, you know, cross-site tracking and some of the ads, but it's honestly

01:02:13 ◼   ► more problematic with the tracking, have gotten so bad and so abused that it is now time to

01:02:20 ◼   ► take technical countermeasures to reduce or eliminate that tracking if you don't want

01:02:26 ◼   ► it the same way that we took technical countermeasures to block pop-up ads 15 years ago. And I really

01:02:33 ◼   ► thought this was going to be, as I said, I thought this was going to be very controversial.

01:02:36 ◼   ► I thought a lot of people who were in publishing, which includes a lot of my friends, would

01:02:40 ◼   ► really be offended that I'm suggesting ad blocking, basically. And it wasn't. The guys

01:02:47 ◼   ► from the All were really upset with me, but I don't really know them and I don't really

01:02:52 ◼   ► care. That's it. Nobody else was. Like, I thought there would be a huge divide.

01:02:59 ◼   ► That's why I said, like, I was a little afraid to publish it. Instead, I've

01:03:04 ◼   ► gotten hundreds and hundreds of responses on links and just hundreds of

01:03:10 ◼   ► people telling me, "Yes, finally. Yes, I agree. That's exactly right." Including

01:03:16 ◼   ► many of my friends who are publishers, including many publishers I am not

01:03:19 ◼   ► friends with, maybe I am now, we'll see, I was shocked at how positive and supportive

01:03:28 ◼   ► and how much in agreement the reaction to this was. I mean, I can go on my blog and

01:03:33 ◼   ► I can post my name is Marco Arment and I will get more disagreement on that than I will

01:03:40 ◼   ► from this article. Like, it is crazy how much people will argue with me over anything else

01:03:44 ◼   ► I ever say, and this that I thought was going to be incredibly controversial, it turns out

01:03:50 ◼   ► a lot of people think this, and even publishers know, because like, you know, and I said,

01:03:55 ◼   ► you know, it's not like publishers are like evil, you know, devil corporations, like publishing

01:03:59 ◼   ► is hard. It's, as I learned when I tried to do the magazine, and as I've seen like with

01:04:02 ◼   ► my other efforts with, you know, ad supported media and trying to do stuff online that makes

01:04:08 ◼   ► money, it's hard. And especially if you have to have a staff, then your costs are way higher

01:04:13 ◼   ► than individuals like me or John Gruber publishing on our own sites. Like, having a staff is

01:04:18 ◼   ► incredibly expensive and so it is very, very hard for publishers to make enough money to

01:04:22 ◼   ► stay afloat. And we see so many publishers shutting down or downsizing. It is incredibly

01:04:28 ◼   ► difficult to make it work. And so they have been, you know, kind of forced, some of them

01:04:35 ◼   ► have been forced by financial situations, some of them have just been greed. But they've

01:04:39 ◼   ► They've been, whatever the cause, publishers,

01:04:42 ◼   ► many of whom are well-meaning, have been quote forced

01:04:46 ◼   ► to adopt really terrible ads

01:04:49 ◼   ► and integrate really terrible tracking.

01:04:51 ◼   ► And there's, of course, this whole obsession

01:04:53 ◼   ► between lots of people about metrics

01:04:55 ◼   ► and tracking everything everybody ever does on a webpage

01:04:58 ◼   ► or on media or in an app.

01:05:00 ◼   ► And apps are a whole separate discussion.

01:05:01 ◼   ► We'll get to that, I'm sure, in the future.

01:05:03 ◼   ► But there's all this tracking going on

01:05:07 ◼   ► and all this abuse from ads,

01:05:09 ◼   ► and publishers often just say,

01:05:12 ◼   ► and like Renee said this,

01:05:13 ◼   ► often they'll get a report of some ad being bad

01:05:16 ◼   ► or inappropriate or over the line in some way,

01:05:19 ◼   ► and they have to go,

01:05:20 ◼   ► well, they have to go to the ad network

01:05:21 ◼   ► that's certain to them and try to report it,

01:05:23 ◼   ► and that's often very hard.

01:05:24 ◼   ► And you're just inserting code on your page

01:05:27 ◼   ► that will call to an ad network

01:05:29 ◼   ► and just have them run arbitrary code

01:05:31 ◼   ► that some advertiser entered in some system somewhere

01:05:33 ◼   ► on all your viewers' computers.

01:05:36 ◼   ► And so you as the publisher really don't have a lot of control over that.

01:05:40 ◼   ► The ad network barely has control over that and they have even less incentive to care.

01:05:45 ◼   ► And so you have this terrible situation where like there's really nobody kind of policing

01:05:52 ◼   ► the store in a way that will be effective.

01:05:55 ◼   ► And so you have to do it as the user yourself.

01:05:57 ◼   ► You have to adopt technical countermeasures.

01:06:01 ◼   ► you know, I had my term. It's like you have to start considering installing ad blockers

01:06:07 ◼   ► or tracking blockers like I mentioned. I use ghostery. I know there are others. Please

01:06:11 ◼   ► stop telling me about the others. I'm happy with ghostery. It's fine. I think I think

01:06:19 ◼   ► now is the time to do that and what's what's extra frustrating is that a lot of the problems

01:06:25 ◼   ► with this, a lot of the problems that have led to this are things that are inherent to

01:06:30 ◼   ► the way web browsers work, like the way how they request things, how cross domain requests

01:06:36 ◼   ► work, how cross domain cookies work, how JavaScript includes work and what they have access to.

01:06:42 ◼   ► And over the last twenty years that this kind of stuff has been possible and has developed,

01:06:49 ◼   ► web browser manufacturers and standards committees have added all these capabilities to the web

01:06:56 ◼   ► that add new things web pages can do and new ways. Now the new thing is to make web pages,

01:07:05 ◼   ► to give them more of the abilities that were previously exclusive only to apps and to sort

01:07:09 ◼   ► of make web pages more app-like. But meanwhile, the core problems that enable all this terrible

01:07:16 ◼   ► tracking and privacy invasion and horribly slow JavaScript and everything, those have

01:07:21 ◼   ► not been addressed very well by the web development and standards communities. And so like, you

01:07:28 ◼   ► know, like, why have they not addressed that? Why have they, I don't know, like...

01:07:33 ◼   ► - The recent years, like, you're right up until maybe like a year or two years or three

01:07:37 ◼   ► years ago when browser vendors, especially the, you know, Chrome and sort of the leading

01:07:43 ◼   ► edge modern browsers, really started turning the screws on things that are, they're mostly

01:07:49 ◼   ► security focus but they end up affecting advertising.

01:07:54 ◼   ► Anything related to cross-site scripting, the doors have been slamming down on things

01:07:59 ◼   ► related to accessing DOM elements and other frames or accessing anything happening in

01:08:04 ◼   ► JavaScript that was served from a different domain.

01:08:08 ◼   ► And it's kind of a pain in the butt if you're doing web development, especially if you own

01:08:12 ◼   ► a fleet of your own domains, they're all something.foo.com and you want them to all cooperate.

01:08:17 ◼   ► That used to be easy because that just worked normally, but then they started pulling things

01:08:20 ◼   ► down.

01:08:21 ◼   ► It's like, "Oh, I got to add cross origin request headers to everything," and the wildcarding

01:08:26 ◼   ► is crappy.

01:08:27 ◼   ► You can't do star.foo.com.

01:08:28 ◼   ► You got to either do star or the exact domain names, and if the domain names don't match

01:08:31 ◼   ► up, maybe something will work, but you can't get your JavaScript stack traces.

01:08:35 ◼   ► And it's like, that is, like I said, it's mostly security related.

01:08:39 ◼   ► You're like, "Oh, that's not related to advertising."

01:08:41 ◼   ► Advertisers can still do what they want because they make you serve it through your own proxy

01:08:43 ◼   ► or do something else that gets around all this stuff.

01:08:46 ◼   ► But it does end up limiting the privacy-invading things you can do.

01:08:49 ◼   ► In the bad old days, once JavaScript got on your page, you could read all your cookies,

01:08:53 ◼   ► you could read things in other frames, even an embedded iframe, and now the restrictions

01:08:57 ◼   ► are much greater than they were before.

01:08:59 ◼   ► So I think that is, like you talk about technical countermeasures, the most important countermeasures

01:09:04 ◼   ► is what you mentioned before, like the platforms and the browser vendors.

01:09:10 ◼   ► They have much more power than individual nerdy users because we are few and the grand

01:09:16 ◼   ► in the grand scheme of things, not that important.

01:09:18 ◼   ► But as soon as, you know, popups,

01:09:20 ◼   ► everyone hated popups and popunders and all that stuff.

01:09:23 ◼   ► Browser vendors correctly realized

01:09:26 ◼   ► that there is almost no downside to,

01:09:29 ◼   ► and a big upside to putting pop-up blockers in your browser.

01:09:32 ◼   ► So it was practically overnight.

01:09:34 ◼   ► They just slammed the door shut on that entire thing.

01:09:36 ◼   ► Like that was, they were in epidemic.

01:09:38 ◼   ► Popups were everywhere.

01:09:39 ◼   ► And it was like, everyone just said,

01:09:40 ◼   ► nope, that's not happening.

01:09:42 ◼   ► Was there any sort of lengthy negotiation

01:09:45 ◼   ► and hemming and hawing about putting the websites

01:09:48 ◼   ► we love out of business, doesn't matter.

01:09:50 ◼   ► It was in browsers, it was on by default.

01:09:52 ◼   ► That's the end of that, right?

01:09:54 ◼   ► There was a little bit of arms race fighting,

01:09:56 ◼   ► like see how we can like, if you, when you click

01:09:57 ◼   ► on this link, I'll count that as your intentional click

01:10:00 ◼   ► to pop up a pop thing, but for the most part,

01:10:04 ◼   ► putting that feature in the browser made pop-ups

01:10:07 ◼   ► way less prevalent than they were before.

01:10:09 ◼   ► Like I still see them, they still, they can still trick you

01:10:11 ◼   ► into clicking and doing something like that.

01:10:13 ◼   ► That is a super important technical countermeasure.

01:10:16 ◼   ► Same thing with Apple, allowing you to use,

01:10:18 ◼   ► what do they call them?

01:10:19 ◼   ► Content filters or whatever in iOS.

01:10:22 ◼   ► You couldn't do that before.

01:10:24 ◼   ► Apple has opened that door

01:10:26 ◼   ► and I think they made the same calculation.

01:10:28 ◼   ► They're like, we know if we do this,

01:10:30 ◼   ► the first thing out the gate

01:10:30 ◼   ► is gonna be a million ad blockers.

01:10:32 ◼   ► We're gonna make it super efficient.

01:10:33 ◼   ► We're gonna make it faster

01:10:34 ◼   ► because they want people to download those ad blockers

01:10:39 ◼   ► and use them to make their experience

01:10:41 ◼   ► browsing the web on their iPhone better.

01:10:43 ◼   ► So that's like the--

01:10:45 ◼   ► I almost feel like we are not as involved in the struggle

01:10:49 ◼   ► as we like to think that we are.

01:10:52 ◼   ► That really it's a negotiation between the platforms,

01:10:54 ◼   ► the software, and the websites.

01:10:57 ◼   ► Only as nerds who know about what a Chrome extension is

01:11:01 ◼   ► and are shopping around for this ghostery and disconnect

01:11:04 ◼   ► and all these other--

01:11:05 ◼   ► and the good old ad blog and all that stuff.

01:11:07 ◼   ► Most people don't run those things

01:11:09 ◼   ► or don't know how to install them

01:11:10 ◼   ► or someone installs them for them,

01:11:11 ◼   ► but then they break some websites or whatever.

01:11:13 ◼   ► Like navigating that is mostly a nerd concern.

01:11:16 ◼   ► But since those are the circles we travel in,

01:11:18 ◼   ► I understand your concern about like,

01:11:20 ◼   ► if I post this and I endorse this,

01:11:22 ◼   ► I know everyone who's reading it knows

01:11:23 ◼   ► how to install these things probably.

01:11:25 ◼   ► And so now by my endorsing it,

01:11:27 ◼   ► am I encouraging other people to install it?

01:11:29 ◼   ► And then, you know, am I reducing the revenue

01:11:31 ◼   ► to sites that people I know work for or whatever?

01:11:35 ◼   ► And when I think about that,

01:11:36 ◼   ► like just sort of our own little microcosm,

01:11:38 ◼   ► not in the sort of grand scheme of things,

01:11:41 ◼   ► for the wider web, when I think of that, I think,

01:11:44 ◼   ► well, it's the same negotiation

01:11:46 ◼   ► we've always had between sites.

01:11:48 ◼   ► It's not so much, you have to decide,

01:11:52 ◼   ► you have to do the calculation.

01:11:53 ◼   ► Do you like reading this website?

01:11:55 ◼   ► Yeah, I like the website,

01:11:56 ◼   ► but I don't like this other part of it.

01:11:57 ◼   ► All right, well, you can decide,

01:11:59 ◼   ► I'm gonna continue to read the website,

01:12:00 ◼   ► but I'm going to do something

01:12:02 ◼   ► that will make it a better experience to me.

01:12:04 ◼   ► Are you gonna block all ads?

01:12:05 ◼   ► Most people know that, yeah, if you block all ads,

01:12:08 ◼   ► probably you are making less money for the site,

01:12:11 ◼   ► but you're just one person and maybe you think,

01:12:12 ◼   ► well, even if me and everyone I know blocks ads

01:12:14 ◼   ► and even if all the nerds block ads,

01:12:16 ◼   ► it's only X percentage, so I still feel okay with that.

01:12:18 ◼   ► So maybe you're fine with it.

01:12:19 ◼   ► You just have to decide.

01:12:20 ◼   ► Like, there are consequences to everyone's action.

01:12:22 ◼   ► Like, should I block pop-ups?

01:12:23 ◼   ► Oh, what if I'm stopping the revenue

01:12:25 ◼   ► that these guys were getting from these obnoxious pop-up ads?

01:12:28 ◼   ► If I want the site still to exist, I better enable pop-ups.

01:12:30 ◼   ► Well, some sites did go under

01:12:32 ◼   ► because they couldn't be supported without pop-ups,

01:12:33 ◼   ► but other sites didn't go under.

01:12:35 ◼   ► They found another way to make money.

01:12:37 ◼   ► If everybody's blocking pop-ups,

01:12:38 ◼   ► advertisers just find another way to advertise.

01:12:40 ◼   ► So I'm sort of on this battle between users and websites

01:12:45 ◼   ► and browser vendors and whatever, I try to,

01:12:49 ◼   ► in my actions with the own stuff that I install,

01:12:52 ◼   ► try to make them reflect the sites that I care about.

01:12:56 ◼   ► I like a white list.

01:12:57 ◼   ► The sites that I care about that have just

01:12:59 ◼   ► become too obnoxious, I feel like I

01:13:00 ◼   ► have to send them a signal.

01:13:01 ◼   ► Like, I like your site.

01:13:02 ◼   ► I like reading these things.

01:13:04 ◼   ► But autoplay video is just not happening.

01:13:06 ◼   ► So I'm going to install things.

01:13:07 ◼   ► I'm going to install things that are going to stop that.

01:13:10 ◼   ► that is my signal to you, the site,

01:13:12 ◼   ► that if the only way you can exist

01:13:14 ◼   ► is with auto-playing video, then I'm sorry,

01:13:16 ◼   ► but I don't want you to exist.

01:13:18 ◼   ► And I don't, you know, speaking of ethics

01:13:19 ◼   ► and morals and stuff, I think that that is not,

01:13:22 ◼   ► like there's no obligation on either side.

01:13:24 ◼   ► They put something listening on a port at an IP address,

01:13:28 ◼   ► and I, and they welcome the entire world

01:13:31 ◼   ► to make a request for it and receive that information,

01:13:33 ◼   ► and we can do whatever the hell we want

01:13:34 ◼   ► with that information.

01:13:34 ◼   ► I can redirect it to a file, I can run it through Lynx,

01:13:37 ◼   ► or I can show it in a web browser,

01:13:39 ◼   ► but just not request any of the Flash

01:13:41 ◼   ► and not request any of the JavaScript trackers.

01:13:43 ◼   ► Like that's the negotiation.

01:13:45 ◼   ► There's nothing ethical about it.

01:13:47 ◼   ► It's purely practical.

01:13:49 ◼   ► It's like if you understand the consequences

01:13:51 ◼   ► of what you're doing on your end

01:13:53 ◼   ► and how it might affect revenue

01:13:54 ◼   ► and how it might affect the existence of the thing

01:13:55 ◼   ► on that end, also how it might motivate them

01:13:57 ◼   ► to change their website.

01:13:58 ◼   ► If everybody blocks pop-ups, like then the sites go,

01:14:02 ◼   ► well, we'll have to come up with a different strategy.

01:14:05 ◼   ► And maybe that strategy involves

01:14:06 ◼   ► a million JavaScript trackers

01:14:07 ◼   ► that are not as invisible as pop-ups,

01:14:08 ◼   ► but they can end up paying more when we track your habits.

01:14:11 ◼   ► And if everyone installs something to block that,

01:14:13 ◼   ► they'll have to find another way.

01:14:15 ◼   ► I'm pretty comfortable with this negotiation.

01:14:17 ◼   ► I don't lose any sleep over the give and take.

01:14:22 ◼   ► I think that's just the natural way things work out.

01:14:24 ◼   ► The thing I'm mostly frustrated with is

01:14:26 ◼   ► for the longest time it seemed like the browser vendors

01:14:29 ◼   ► were kind of afraid to take that extra step.

01:14:31 ◼   ► Like, browsers could come with built-in ed blockers,

01:14:34 ◼   ► for example, or built-in JavaScript, like they don't.

01:14:36 ◼   ► They just kind of like, well, we have an extension framework

01:14:39 ◼   ► and people can write whatever they want

01:14:40 ◼   ► and the nerds can install it and whatever.

01:14:42 ◼   ► Browsers do come with a built-in pop-up blocker.

01:14:45 ◼   ► It seems like we're ready for the next round

01:14:47 ◼   ► of kind of platform owners and browser vendors

01:14:51 ◼   ► to take the next step,

01:14:53 ◼   ► because I think leaving it entirely to third parties,

01:14:55 ◼   ► even how iOS is doing,

01:14:57 ◼   ► is gonna create a little bit of confusion.

01:15:00 ◼   ► There's a potential for the ad blockers

01:15:02 ◼   ► and the anti-tracker things to themselves be scammy.

01:15:04 ◼   ► I think someone pointed out the ghostery

01:15:06 ◼   ► is produced by an ad company.

01:15:07 ◼   ► The good old ad block extension is also,

01:15:10 ◼   ► lets people pay it to whitelist their ads.

01:15:12 ◼   ► Like scaminess finds a way.

01:15:15 ◼   ► It's like a life in Jurassic Park.

01:15:18 ◼   ► So we still have to be vigilant,

01:15:20 ◼   ► but I think I'm ready for the next round of,

01:15:23 ◼   ► like you said, technical countermeasures

01:15:24 ◼   ► from all parties involved to renegotiate the contract.

01:15:27 ◼   ► Because there's nothing that says

01:15:29 ◼   ► that the only way sites can make money

01:15:31 ◼   ► is to have increasingly scammy ads.

01:15:33 ◼   ► If nobody can have that much trackers

01:15:35 ◼   ► that much stupid JavaScript, if it ends up being wildly blocked, they'll have to, you

01:15:39 ◼   ► know, find a different way, hopefully a more tasteful way to advertise.

01:15:43 ◼   ► This is the negotiation.

01:15:44 ◼   ► They put out content, but if we find it annoying, they have to, you know, provide something

01:15:49 ◼   ► that we like and not annoy us too much.

01:15:50 ◼   ► And if they're annoying us too much, we'll do something back.

01:15:52 ◼   ► And they have to figure out a way to make something that people enjoy that also pays

01:15:56 ◼   ► money.

01:15:57 ◼   ► And that's why I think the whole thing of like, if you block ads, you're a criminal,

01:16:01 ◼   ► you're taking foods from people's mouths, you're trying to put sites out of business.

01:16:05 ◼   ► "There's no obligation on either side of this.

01:16:07 ◼   ► "We all have to come to a mutual agreement

01:16:08 ◼   ► "and we feel like we have a beneficial relationship

01:16:10 ◼   ► "where I enjoy the things that you're writing

01:16:13 ◼   ► "and you enjoy me coming there to see it

01:16:15 ◼   ► "and seeing your ads or whatever."

01:16:18 ◼   ► That's the negotiation we're all in here.

01:16:20 ◼   ► And it's not as if one party is just obligated

01:16:23 ◼   ► to just choke down whatever the other party does,

01:16:25 ◼   ► nor is, on the other side of the coin,

01:16:28 ◼   ► sites that say, "You can't come read our site

01:16:29 ◼   ► "if you run an ad blocker."

01:16:31 ◼   ► And ours technically has various times done

01:16:33 ◼   ► various detection to see, "Hey, are you blocking ads?

01:16:35 ◼   ► "Nope, sorry, you're not allowed to read our site."

01:16:36 ◼   ► They can do that too, like that's the negotiation.

01:16:39 ◼   ► - Oh yeah.

01:16:40 ◼   ► - Because ours technically, as historically,

01:16:42 ◼   ► I would imagine, I don't remember the exact numbers,

01:16:44 ◼   ► a higher percentage than normal of ad blockers

01:16:47 ◼   ► because it's read by a bunch of nerds, right?

01:16:48 ◼   ► And so it's like, well, you can't have 50%

01:16:51 ◼   ► of the people running ad blockers,

01:16:53 ◼   ► it's just not viable for our business.

01:16:54 ◼   ► You are reading our site, you obviously enjoy the content,

01:16:56 ◼   ► we'll try to keep it tasteful, we don't have autoplay ads,

01:16:58 ◼   ► we don't have video ads, like we don't have a lot of ads

01:17:01 ◼   ► on the page, if you block ads, you can't read the site.

01:17:03 ◼   ► So that's the thing we're going through here.

01:17:06 ◼   ► And I'm ready for the next round of,

01:17:08 ◼   ► oh God, I almost quoted the "Phantom Menace."

01:17:12 ◼   ► I won't do it.

01:17:13 ◼   ► Everyone knows what I was gonna say.

01:17:15 ◼   ► - I actually don't.

01:17:16 ◼   ► - Me neither.

01:17:17 ◼   ► - I know, the rest of the audience does.

01:17:18 ◼   ► It's fine.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Now I'm depressed.

01:17:21 ◼   ► I don't like that popping into my head.

01:17:23 ◼   ► Damn you, George Lucas.

01:17:25 ◼   ► - How many times have you seen the "Phantom Menace?"

01:17:27 ◼   ► I've only seen it like twice.

01:17:29 ◼   ► - Too many.

01:17:30 ◼   ► I did a podcast about it.

01:17:31 ◼   ► I don't even wanna talk about it.

01:17:33 ◼   ► It's a dark time. That was from one of the good movies. Oh wow. Alright, so we should

01:17:38 ◼   ► potentially be done here, but so Jon can get himself a tissue and cry. Wow. Well, thanks

01:17:43 ◼   ► a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Backblaze, and Casper, and we will see you

01:17:48 ◼   ► next week.

01:17:49 ◼   ► [music]

01:17:52 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, 'cause it was accidental.

01:17:58 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:17:59 ◼   ► Oh, it was accidental.

01:18:01 ◼   ► Accidental.

01:18:02 ◼   ► John didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him

01:18:07 ◼   ► 'Cause it was accidental (it was accidental)

01:18:10 ◼   ► It was accidental (accidental)

01:18:12 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm

01:18:17 ◼   ► And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them

01:18:22 ◼   ► @C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S

01:18:26 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:18:31 ◼   ► Anti-Marco Armin, S-I-R-A-C, USA, Syracuse, it's accidental.

01:18:41 ◼   ► They didn't mean to, accidental.

01:18:46 ◼   ► Tech podcast so long.

01:18:51 ◼   ► Jon, let me make you happy.

01:18:53 ◼   ► How is not doing a review this summer?

01:18:56 ◼   ► It's pretty good. Pretty, pretty good.

01:18:59 ◼   ► See, just like that, you're back in it.

01:19:01 ◼   ► Let's do another hour and a half.

01:19:02 ◼   ► Another reference?

01:19:03 ◼   ► You wanna watch Star Wars with all your new time?

01:19:06 ◼   ► How about, let's start with episode one.

01:19:08 ◼   ► Let's uh, what's that again?

01:19:09 ◼   ► There's a couple of weird things about not doing the reboot.

01:19:12 ◼   ► Like obviously yeah, free time, less pressure, more relaxing, blah blah blah, but the other

01:19:15 ◼   ► thing is that of course I have El Capitan installed and uh, well, the thing that's annoying

01:19:21 ◼   ► me about it is, it seems like, first of all I have it installed but I don't use it a lot

01:19:25 ◼   ► because it's on my main computer and I don't want to reboot and it'll have a reason to

01:19:28 ◼   ► to go into it.

01:19:28 ◼   ► And then every time I reboot into it,

01:19:29 ◼   ► there's like two new updates.

01:19:30 ◼   ► But rather than just installing the latest version on top

01:19:33 ◼   ► of it, I have to go through the update like two times.

01:19:34 ◼   ► Like I'm a Windows user.

01:19:35 ◼   ► It's like upgrade to beta 5, upgrade to beta 6,

01:19:38 ◼   ► upgrade to beta 7 with a reboot in between each.

01:19:40 ◼   ► It's like just bring me right to beta 7, guys.

01:19:43 ◼   ► Anyway, I don't know much about using the operating system

01:19:47 ◼   ► because I'm finding myself not using it.

01:19:48 ◼   ► So the other exciting thing that's going to happen here

01:19:50 ◼   ► is it's going to come out.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And I'm going to have to read reviews

01:19:53 ◼   ► to find out what the hell-- I mean,

01:19:54 ◼   ► I think I know most of this stuff.

01:19:55 ◼   ► but all the little intricate details

01:19:58 ◼   ► and the deep dives and stuff, I'm not doing that myself,

01:20:01 ◼   ► so I basically don't know.

01:20:02 ◼   ► I don't know what it's like to use that

01:20:04 ◼   ► as my main operating system

01:20:06 ◼   ► for any substantial period of time,

01:20:07 ◼   ► because I just haven't been.

01:20:08 ◼   ► It's like I've only booted into it.

01:20:10 ◼   ► Every time I boot into it, there's two more updates,

01:20:11 ◼   ► and then I do all the updates and I wander around,

01:20:14 ◼   ► and I enjoy the fact

01:20:14 ◼   ► that I don't have to take any screenshots,

01:20:16 ◼   ► and then I fiddle around with it

01:20:18 ◼   ► and play with the various options and look at things,

01:20:20 ◼   ► and then I reboot it into my regular OS.

01:20:23 ◼   ► - It'll be interesting to see when it comes out

01:20:27 ◼   ► and as you have to then turn to other people

01:20:29 ◼   ► for their reviews, you're probably gonna have

01:20:33 ◼   ► some very conflicting feelings of probably immense relief

01:20:36 ◼   ► that you didn't have to do it,

01:20:38 ◼   ► but also immense dissatisfaction

01:20:40 ◼   ► with the job everyone else did and your absence.

01:20:42 ◼   ► - I'm fine with it, it'll be fine.

01:20:44 ◼   ► I'm excited to use the new OS,

01:20:46 ◼   ► because I see, it's hard to tell

01:20:49 ◼   ► 'cause you reboot into a clean OS,

01:20:50 ◼   ► you're like, "Wow, this is so much faster."

01:20:51 ◼   ► because there's nothing installed on it

01:20:53 ◼   ► and it's like even a different Apple ID

01:20:54 ◼   ► and it's all, you know,

01:20:55 ◼   ► it seems smoother and cleaner and nicer.

01:20:58 ◼   ► They've done minor refinements to the look that I like.

01:21:01 ◼   ► I think all the changes they've made to the look I endorse,

01:21:03 ◼   ► even on my crappy non-retina screen here,

01:21:05 ◼   ► it looks a little bit crisper and cleaner and tighter,

01:21:07 ◼   ► less kind of low contrast, faded and edgeless.

01:21:12 ◼   ► And yeah, like I like everything about it so far.

01:21:19 ◼   ► I like the suggestion from Chloe Diggs Pipe Wark

01:21:22 ◼   ► in the chat room who says,

01:21:24 ◼   ► "We should pool our money to get Jon out to California

01:21:26 ◼   ► "so he can review the actual El Capitan."

01:21:28 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:21:29 ◼   ► The mountain.

01:21:30 ◼   ► - I don't know how I would review the mountain.

01:21:33 ◼   ► I don't like being on top of the,

01:21:34 ◼   ► what is it, the caldera or whatever that's gonna explode

01:21:36 ◼   ► and destroy the entire West Coast.

01:21:38 ◼   ► Sometime in the next 50,000 years, guaranteed,

01:21:41 ◼   ► or something like that.

01:21:43 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:21:44 ◼   ► - Oh my goodness.

01:21:45 ◼   ► So is there any one particular review

01:21:47 ◼   ► that you're looking forward to?

01:21:49 ◼   ► Do you know who's doing it for ours?

01:21:51 ◼   ► Is ours doing it?

01:21:52 ◼   ► - Yeah, ours is doing it.

01:21:53 ◼   ► I will read theirs.

01:21:55 ◼   ► If Vittucci does one, I'll read it.

01:21:57 ◼   ► I'm more, I'm sure I'll read.

01:21:59 ◼   ► If Jason will probably do one for Macworld at this rate,

01:22:01 ◼   ► I'll read that one.

01:22:02 ◼   ► I read them all anyway, but now I'll read them

01:22:05 ◼   ► and I'll be learning things.

01:22:06 ◼   ► - And I'm with Marco that I can't wait

01:22:11 ◼   ► until all this comes out and then you quietly tell somebody,

01:22:15 ◼   ► one of us hopefully, oh my god, I cannot believe the job that these people have done. Like,

01:22:21 ◼   ► they did a great job, but... Did I ever say that before? No, it's fine.

01:22:25 ◼   ► Like, it's fine. They got most of the way, but...

01:22:28 ◼   ► Unless there's like some obvious pop culture reference that nobody managed to make,

01:22:32 ◼   ► then I feel like I will miss, you know, that really, I was needed. That annoyed me about

01:22:38 ◼   ► the Google alphabet thing, where they made like the period a link to the hooli thing.

01:22:43 ◼   ► Did you see that?

01:22:44 ◼   ► Yeah, yeah, yeah.

01:22:45 ◼   ► And it was like, oh my god, it's the best Easter egg ever.

01:22:48 ◼   ► Like seriously, a period length?

01:22:50 ◼   ► Amateur hour.

01:22:52 ◼   ► I think it wasn't even underlined.

01:22:54 ◼   ► Like they styled it in such a way that it--

01:22:56 ◼   ► Text decoration, none.

01:22:57 ◼   ► Whoa, advanced technology.

01:22:59 ◼   ► Yeah, all right.

01:23:00 ◼   ► Anyway, my pointless HTML Easter egg genius

01:23:05 ◼   ► will go unrecognized in my lifetime, clearly.

01:23:08 ◼   ► I'm sorry, Jon.

01:23:09 ◼   ► Who's going to make all the Simpsons links references?

01:23:12 ◼   ► - Yeah, the worst thing about Easter eggs in HTML

01:23:14 ◼   ► is you just view source and you can see them all, right?

01:23:16 ◼   ► I was never clever, I was never like doing the job.

01:23:19 ◼   ► In this age of right-click inspect,

01:23:22 ◼   ► you can't even hide stuff in the DOM anymore.

01:23:23 ◼   ► Maybe if I did it with Shadow DOM.

01:23:24 ◼   ► But anyway, I didn't even try to hide.

01:23:26 ◼   ► It was just out there in the open,

01:23:27 ◼   ► so it seems like all the Easter eggs

01:23:29 ◼   ► and all my references should have been found by now.

01:23:31 ◼   ► But most people just don't even care,

01:23:33 ◼   ► so they just go right by it.

01:23:35 ◼   ► - Yeah, I didn't click.

01:23:36 ◼   ► I would at least hover on all of your links,

01:23:38 ◼   ► but I didn't click on a lot of them

01:23:39 ◼   ► because I knew, if I'm honest,

01:23:41 ◼   ► - I wouldn't understand the damn reference

01:23:43 ◼   ► in the first place.

01:23:44 ◼   ► - Sometimes I give you the hover, sometimes I don't.

01:23:47 ◼   ► Depends on the reference, depends on the thing,

01:23:50 ◼   ► but period links.

01:23:52 ◼   ► - Let's just say that I did not read your review on Expert.

01:23:58 ◼   ► I read it on amateur hour.

01:24:00 ◼   ► - Yeah, I wouldn't even follow most things

01:24:01 ◼   ► 'cause I was reading on iPads usually

01:24:03 ◼   ► 'cause that's how I would prefer to read,

01:24:05 ◼   ► like, you know, to sit down, concentrate,

01:24:06 ◼   ► not sitting in front of a computer,

01:24:07 ◼   ► but like sit down and actually read, you know, reading mode.

01:24:10 ◼   ► And for me, that's an iPad or an iPhone.

01:24:14 ◼   ► So I would always read it on an iPad.

01:24:16 ◼   ► - I could have done some cool gesture recognition

01:24:18 ◼   ► Easter eggs but never got around to it.

01:24:20 ◼   ► - Wow.

01:24:21 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:24:22 ◼   ► Oh goodness.

01:24:23 ◼   ► So what do you do in the summer other than traveling a bit?

01:24:25 ◼   ► Like do you feel like you have time to fill?

01:24:27 ◼   ► I mean, I assume the answer is no, but.

01:24:30 ◼   ► - It's more relaxing.

01:24:31 ◼   ► I mean, I'm podcasting more this summer than I was

01:24:36 ◼   ► 'cause I've got the two regular podcasts now,

01:24:37 ◼   ► even though one of them is every other week.

01:24:39 ◼   ► And so that actually does make a big difference.

01:24:42 ◼   ► So it's basically, and it's possible

01:24:43 ◼   ► between all the vacations,

01:24:44 ◼   ► it's like at least two podcasts every week.

01:24:46 ◼   ► So that is taking up more time.

01:24:48 ◼   ► And then, yeah, being on vacation

01:24:51 ◼   ► and not stressing about things and just, you know,

01:24:53 ◼   ► the nights when I'm not podcasting,

01:24:55 ◼   ► I can actually just relax and watch an episode

01:24:58 ◼   ► of "Orange is the New Black" and not worry

01:25:01 ◼   ► about what I have and haven't written

01:25:02 ◼   ► and not worry about retaking screenshots

01:25:05 ◼   ► or poring over details of the OS

01:25:06 ◼   ► or trying to get in touch with Apple PR

01:25:08 ◼   ► in the three days before I have to publish my thing.

01:25:12 ◼   ► Relaxing.

01:25:13 ◼   ► - I am glad, I really am.

01:25:16 ◼   ► I'm glad that things are going well

01:25:18 ◼   ► and that you are relaxed.

01:25:19 ◼   ► So, are you relaxed enough to do it

01:25:22 ◼   ► for whatever ridiculous name they come up with next year?

01:25:25 ◼   ► - Oh, no.

01:25:26 ◼   ► I'm out.

01:25:27 ◼   ► I'm out.

01:25:28 ◼   ► - So you're not Michael Jordan.

01:25:30 ◼   ► This is your one and only retirement.

01:25:31 ◼   ► - No, I'm gonna go play baseball?

01:25:32 ◼   ► Come on.

01:25:33 ◼   ► - You never know, just asking.

01:25:36 ◼   ► - I'm already reviewing toasters, kind of.

01:25:38 ◼   ► - That's true.

01:25:39 ◼   ► And bless you for doing it.

01:25:41 ◼   ► Oh goodness.

01:25:43 ◼   ► They have a door yet?

01:25:45 ◼   ► - No.

01:25:46 ◼   ► - Cool.

01:25:46 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:25:48 ◼   ► - See, home contracting work is never done.

01:25:50 ◼   ► - Yeah, like the goal was to have this done this summer.

01:25:53 ◼   ► I think we'll probably still make that,

01:25:55 ◼   ► but you know, could be into September, whatever.

01:25:58 ◼   ► - Yeah.

01:26:00 ◼   ► Marco, how's your new child that arrived about a week ago?

01:26:03 ◼   ► - Oh yeah, the camera.

01:26:05 ◼   ► - Good?

01:26:06 ◼   ► - It's really good.

01:26:07 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean, I've only had it a week so far. I knew going into it that I would not be happy

01:26:13 ◼   ► with the battery life that the battery life on all the Sony mirrorless cameras, at least

01:26:18 ◼   ► the full frame ones is awful and they have continued that tradition. The battery life

01:26:22 ◼   ► is indeed terrible. They have partially fixed that problem by just shipping it with two

01:26:27 ◼   ► batteries. Seriously, yes, they ship it. This is the first thing I've ever bought that comes

01:26:31 ◼   ► with two of its own batteries. So, and they give you, they give you an external charger

01:26:36 ◼   ► also in a control via USB when you plug it in so it's hilarious so yeah so they

01:26:42 ◼   ► we have multiple batteries and it's fine and the picture quality is just stunning

01:26:47 ◼   ► I mean it's just ridiculous what I especially like about it so this is I'm

01:26:51 ◼   ► talking about the a7r - I don't know if I actually said that earlier I think I

01:26:54 ◼   ► forgot to what I especially like about it is that my my hit rate or my keeper

01:27:00 ◼   ► rate like that the percentage of pictures I shoot that end up being good

01:27:04 ◼   ► and like good enough to keep and not just delete because something was out of

01:27:08 ◼   ► focus or whatever my hit rate is extremely high way higher than it's ever

01:27:12 ◼   ► been with any other camera I've ever used including an iPhone and and I think

01:27:17 ◼   ► there's there's a number of possible reasons for this number one I think is

01:27:22 ◼   ► just that it has a really really good autofocus system most mirrorless cameras

01:27:27 ◼   ► don't have phase detect autofocus and phase detect is that's what Apple called

01:27:32 ◼   ► focus pixels in the iPhone 6 and it's what it's the way that SLRs have always

01:27:37 ◼   ► focused. The alternative is contrast detect where you just read the image off

01:27:41 ◼   ► the sensor and you you move the focus motor forward and back until you see you

01:27:47 ◼   ► notice like there are more high contrast edges at this focal length than this

01:27:51 ◼   ► focal length that's most likely in focus and that's why you see cameras kind of

01:27:54 ◼   ► going in and out of focus as as they try to find that point that's called hunting

01:27:59 ◼   ► and it's more prevalent in contrast systems.

01:28:02 ◼   ► And so for a while, mirrorless cameras only had those,

01:28:05 ◼   ► and many of them still only have that,

01:28:07 ◼   ► but a few of them have phase detect autofocus,

01:28:10 ◼   ► and this is one of them.

01:28:12 ◼   ► And the previous Sonys, with the exception of the A7II,

01:28:15 ◼   ► the previous, like the A7I line, didn't have phase.

01:28:19 ◼   ► So this results in way faster and more accurate autofocus

01:28:23 ◼   ► than, you know, it's almost SLR speed.

01:28:26 ◼   ► It's not quite there, but it's almost SLR speed.

01:28:28 ◼   ► it's the closest I've ever seen in a camera

01:28:30 ◼   ► that wasn't an SLR.

01:28:32 ◼   ► Or for my usage, I think it's close enough.

01:28:35 ◼   ► It's a little early to say that definitively,

01:28:36 ◼   ► but I think it is close enough to be, you know,

01:28:40 ◼   ► very similar to a good SLR.

01:28:42 ◼   ► Like I used the system in the Nikon D750 that I rented

01:28:46 ◼   ► was, is well regarded, it's another very, very well-liked,

01:28:49 ◼   ► very advanced autofocus system for SLRs.

01:28:52 ◼   ► I don't think it's the best in the world,

01:28:53 ◼   ► but I think it's certainly up there.

01:28:56 ◼   ► And I would say this is actually very close to that.

01:28:58 ◼   ► it's very, very close focus speed wise.

01:29:00 ◼   ► So anyway, contributing to my percentage of pictures

01:29:03 ◼   ► that are good being high is that really good focus system,

01:29:06 ◼   ► that the percentage of pictures that I'm shooting

01:29:08 ◼   ► that the focus is correct is very, very high

01:29:11 ◼   ► because it's just fast and accurate.

01:29:14 ◼   ► And the other thing that I like is,

01:29:16 ◼   ► there's this, and the sensor,

01:29:19 ◼   ► you can crank the ISO sensitivity on the sensor

01:29:22 ◼   ► up like crazy because it's just really, really good.

01:29:26 ◼   ► like most modern Sony sensors,

01:29:28 ◼   ► which includes the ones in Nikon cameras,

01:29:30 ◼   ► most modern Sony developed full-frame sensors

01:29:32 ◼   ► are just stunningly good with keeping low noise

01:29:37 ◼   ► at high ISO sensitivities.

01:29:39 ◼   ► So what's good about this camera is that

01:29:41 ◼   ► not only does it have that, but it has a feature

01:29:44 ◼   ► that is only in a ridiculously small number of cameras.

01:29:47 ◼   ► I don't know why this is such a rare feature

01:29:49 ◼   ► and such a relatively new feature,

01:29:51 ◼   ► where you can set it on auto ISO,

01:29:54 ◼   ► and then you can customize what your minimum shutter speed is.

01:29:58 ◼   ► So you can run the camera in aperture priority mode,

01:30:02 ◼   ► and you can set the aperture to whatever you want,

01:30:03 ◼   ► and then you can say auto ISO,

01:30:05 ◼   ► but keep the shutter speed above, say, 1/250th of a second.

01:30:10 ◼   ► 'Cause 1/250th, you can freeze most motion

01:30:15 ◼   ► with most lens lengths around that,

01:30:17 ◼   ► so that's a good minimum.

01:30:19 ◼   ► So if you're shooting inside at f/5.6

01:30:21 ◼   ► and trying to keep 1/250th of a second,

01:30:24 ◼   ► The ISO has to crank really high up to like, you know,

01:30:27 ◼   ► the 10 to 25,000 range, really high ISOs.

01:30:30 ◼   ► And this camera, it just looks good.

01:30:32 ◼   ► Like it still looks good at those crazy ISOs.

01:30:34 ◼   ► And again, you can get this in modern icons as well.

01:30:37 ◼   ► So I, you know, not to say this is exclusive to Sony,

01:30:39 ◼   ► but to have this in such a small camera

01:30:44 ◼   ► with so many advanced features.

01:30:45 ◼   ► So the combination of the focus system being so good,

01:30:49 ◼   ► the auto ISO with the minimum shutter speed,

01:30:51 ◼   ► making it so that you can basically shoot anything

01:30:54 ◼   ► in any light and have it be sharp,

01:30:56 ◼   ► as long as you're willing to tolerate some noise

01:30:58 ◼   ► at the extreme high ISOs.

01:30:59 ◼   ► And also it has a stabilized image sensor.

01:31:04 ◼   ► So, you know, just similar to the iPhone 6 Plus,

01:31:07 ◼   ► this has sensor shift technology.

01:31:10 ◼   ► So it can shift the sensor around to do image stabilization

01:31:13 ◼   ► no matter what lens you put on it.

01:31:14 ◼   ► So even when you're using a really short lens,

01:31:16 ◼   ► like a 35 millimeter, which it's very hard to find

01:31:20 ◼   ► short image stabilized primes generally,

01:31:23 ◼   ► though not a lot of manufacturers ever make those

01:31:25 ◼   ► 'cause there's a lot less demand for image stabilization

01:31:28 ◼   ► in short lenses like that than there is

01:31:30 ◼   ► like for telephotos and zooms.

01:31:31 ◼   ► So you can have like very, very short distance

01:31:35 ◼   ► image stabilization, shooting really fast, high ISO.

01:31:39 ◼   ► So the combination of those things

01:31:42 ◼   ► just incredibly improves the hit rate of what you're taking.

01:31:46 ◼   ► So rather than shooting like 200 photos

01:31:50 ◼   ► in an afternoon of doing something

01:31:51 ◼   ► and then trying to pick out the 20 good ones,

01:31:54 ◼   ► I'm shooting like 40 photos

01:31:56 ◼   ► and picking out the 20 good ones.

01:31:57 ◼   ► It's incredible, the difference, the time it saves.

01:32:01 ◼   ► And even like, I'm even considering turning off RAW

01:32:04 ◼   ► because the JPEGs that come out of this camera are so good

01:32:08 ◼   ► and do such a good job with dynamic range capture

01:32:10 ◼   ► and there's a bunch of options

01:32:12 ◼   ► I still can play with with that,

01:32:13 ◼   ► that it's just incredible.

01:32:15 ◼   ► Even RAW is becoming a lot less necessary

01:32:19 ◼   ► and I'm using the Photos app and Lightroom

01:32:23 ◼   ► kind of in parallel right now,

01:32:24 ◼   ► 'cause the Apple camera RAW system

01:32:27 ◼   ► doesn't support the RAW files for this yet.

01:32:28 ◼   ► So I'm only dealing with the JPEGs in the Photos app

01:32:32 ◼   ► and only seeing the RAWs in Lightroom,

01:32:33 ◼   ► and I like the JPEGs better

01:32:36 ◼   ► than the color I can get in Lightroom,

01:32:37 ◼   ► and they don't look worse for the most part.

01:32:42 ◼   ► I'll go to the RAW if I have to pull up shadow detail

01:32:44 ◼   ► really high or something, but that's rare.

01:32:47 ◼   ► So yeah, overall, it's great.

01:32:49 ◼   ► Like, it's a really great camera.

01:32:51 ◼   ► So I'm extremely happy with it.

01:32:53 ◼   ► I have three lenses, and I don't expect

01:32:57 ◼   ► to get any more in the near future.

01:32:58 ◼   ► I have a 35 2.8, a little 35.

01:33:01 ◼   ► I have the 55 1.8, which is possibly

01:33:05 ◼   ► the best lens I've ever seen.

01:33:07 ◼   ► And I have the 90 macro, which is really ridiculously sharp,

01:33:12 ◼   ► and it's awfully close, and it's massive and heavy,

01:33:16 ◼   ► but for product shots for my blog and stuff like that,

01:33:19 ◼   ► I'm greatly enjoying that.

01:33:21 ◼   ► So yeah, overall, three thumbs up.

01:33:24 ◼   ► - Nice.

01:33:25 ◼   ► Every time I think of buying one of these

01:33:26 ◼   ► super expensive cameras, I remember A,

01:33:28 ◼   ► that I'd rather spend the money on a Mac,

01:33:30 ◼   ► and B, that where I take most of my pictures

01:33:33 ◼   ► during each year is standing waist deep in ocean waves.

01:33:38 ◼   ► And I really wouldn't want to be holding

01:33:40 ◼   ► a two or $3,000 camera in my hand while doing that.