ATP

00:00:00 ◼   ► It's not as exciting as it sounds because you made me stop before I explained, but now

00:00:03 ◼   ► I'll explain and you'll see that it's not exciting.

00:00:07 ◼   ► So I've been looking at getting a different video card for my Mac to sort of tide me over

00:00:11 ◼   ► and looking into getting an SSD and doing all sorts of other things since it doesn't

00:00:15 ◼   ► look like I'm getting a Mac Pro anytime soon.

00:00:18 ◼   ► And a lot of people have been emailing me with suggestions of things to get and one

00:00:21 ◼   ► person emailed me with an offer of an old video card they had out of their 2008 Mac

00:00:26 ◼   ► Pro.

00:00:27 ◼   ► I don't remember if it was through the feedback form so I don't know if this person wants

00:00:29 ◼   ► me to give out his name, so I won't, but someone said, "Hey, I've got a Radeon 4870 sitting

00:00:35 ◼   ► in my closet that I'm not using.

00:00:37 ◼   ► Do you want it?"

00:00:38 ◼   ► And I said, "Sure."

00:00:40 ◼   ► And so they sent it along, and it just arrived today.

00:00:41 ◼   ► I haven't installed it yet, but that was a very nice thing to do, and it is, instead

00:00:46 ◼   ► of being a seven-year-old video card, it's like a six- or five-year-old video card, but

00:00:51 ◼   ► it's twice as fast as the one I have in there now, and it's an Apple-supplied card, so it's

00:00:56 ◼   ► not like a weird flash PC card or anything like that.

00:00:59 ◼   ► So I think it should work, and if it works, I just doubled my video card speed.

00:01:04 ◼   ► Wow.

00:01:05 ◼   ► Told you it's not very exciting, but, you know.

00:01:08 ◼   ► I also have a boring update to mine, which nobody will care about.

00:01:11 ◼   ► Basically, I changed my order.

00:01:13 ◼   ► I previously said on the show that I ordered the 8-core D700 because what the hell, it's

00:01:17 ◼   ► not, you know, the 8-core is a big jump, but the D700, once you're at that level, relatively

00:01:22 ◼   ► speaking, really isn't.

00:01:23 ◼   ► I stepped back to the 6-core and D500 because after evaluating what was going on and the

00:01:28 ◼   ► actual press I realized, you know, I don't really want to have spent $2,100 total extra

00:01:34 ◼   ► just for those two upgrades and that my actual usage of the thing, I'm probably not going

00:01:39 ◼   ► to see that much of the benefit going from the 6-core to the 8-core to be worth so much

00:01:44 ◼   ► more money. If it was only a few hundred dollars I would have gone for it, but for $1,500 just

00:01:48 ◼   ► for that and for $600 for the D700, which I'll probably never use to its full capacity,

00:01:54 ◼   ► I realized I'd be happier having spent a lot less on the computer, and then if I want to

00:02:00 ◼   ► upgrade it in two or three years instead of five, I'll feel less bad about selling a two

00:02:05 ◼   ► or three old one that was only just under $5,000 instead of one that was just over $7,000.

00:02:11 ◼   ► So that's a pretty big price difference.

00:02:12 ◼   ► I didn't think it was worth the other ones for me.

00:02:15 ◼   ► When the Retina displays come out and you ditch this trash can for a newer trash can,

00:02:19 ◼   ► It would have been better if you had the 700 in there, so it would be more attractive to

00:02:24 ◼   ► me to buy your old one off you.

00:02:26 ◼   ► Yeah, but, so I wrote a big blog post about an hour ago, mostly so we wouldn't have to

00:02:32 ◼   ► go into this in too much depth on the show.

00:02:34 ◼   ► I love you.

00:02:35 ◼   ► Mostly to save Casey, I know.

00:02:36 ◼   ► This is entirely a favor to Casey.

00:02:38 ◼   ► I wrote this up in a blog post instead.

00:02:40 ◼   ► Basically the gist of it is I think that the way they're going to do Retina is not, you

00:02:46 ◼   ► two years off doing 5120 by 2880,

00:02:50 ◼   ► I think what they're actually going to do is using 4K

00:02:53 ◼   ► and just using software scaling,

00:02:54 ◼   ► as we actually talked about like two months ago.

00:02:57 ◼   ► I think that's what they're gonna do

00:02:58 ◼   ► and I think that's probably coming up soon.

00:03:01 ◼   ► Like that could easily happen this year.

00:03:03 ◼   ► I mean, they could release the display today

00:03:04 ◼   ► if they wanted to.

00:03:06 ◼   ► Other manufacturers are releasing very similar displays

00:03:08 ◼   ► at very good price points.

00:03:09 ◼   ► So I think that's how they're gonna do Retina

00:03:12 ◼   ► and therefore I think it will be compatible

00:03:13 ◼   ► with the current Mac Pro.

00:03:15 ◼   ► >> All right, so follow-up time? >> Let's do it. We need a sound effect for

00:03:20 ◼   ► that. The prompt has a sound effect, and I kind of wish—I don't know if we could

00:03:24 ◼   ► pull it off. They could pull it off, because those guys are cool, but I don't know if

00:03:27 ◼   ► we can. >> Follow-up has no sound effect.

00:03:31 ◼   ► >> That is the sound effect. All right, get it.

00:03:33 ◼   ► >> Oh, yeah, so the top item, a couple weeks ago, maybe—I don't remember when, maybe

00:03:38 ◼   ► it was even last week—we talked about—I talked about one of my pet peeves about software

00:03:44 ◼   ► development and that's having a group of people make a product and then having all those people

00:03:49 ◼   ► leave and just having like a skeleton crew there to deal with the product.

00:03:53 ◼   ► And we were talking about this in the context of Apple's iLife apps and their iWork apps

00:03:57 ◼   ► and all the other apps that have seemed sort of languish and as years have gone by and

00:04:01 ◼   ► we're speculating maybe it's because most of the people who are on that product were

00:04:05 ◼   ► taken off to go someplace else.

00:04:06 ◼   ► And I said, "You got to leave the development team on a product.

00:04:10 ◼   ► Once you make a product, you can't take those people off."

00:04:13 ◼   ► And one person wrote in to disagree with me that it wasn't a good idea to make people

00:04:18 ◼   ► get stuck on a product like that because what if they want to go off and do something else,

00:04:22 ◼   ► they shouldn't have to stay with the product they created, and so on and so forth.

00:04:24 ◼   ► And I tried to clarify this in the program, but apparently it wasn't clear enough, so

00:04:27 ◼   ► I just want to say it again.

00:04:29 ◼   ► It's not that the people who make the product have to stay with the product, it's that the

00:04:32 ◼   ► company has to dedicate manpower to that product as long as it exists.

00:04:38 ◼   ► So you can't-- like, a similar level of effort and manpower

00:04:41 ◼   ► has to be applied to a product.

00:04:43 ◼   ► You're like, well, what are all those people doing?

00:04:45 ◼   ► I don't want to have a full-sized team on a product

00:04:47 ◼   ► that's just going through minor revisions year after year.

00:04:50 ◼   ► As any single developer knows, even just keeping up

00:04:53 ◼   ► with OS revisions is almost as big a job

00:04:55 ◼   ► as writing the app in the first place.

00:04:57 ◼   ► In some ways, it's worse.

00:04:58 ◼   ► In some ways, it's easier.

00:04:59 ◼   ► But presumably, you're also going to improve the product

00:05:02 ◼   ► as time goes on.

00:05:02 ◼   ► And if you don't put a team similar in size and capability

00:05:06 ◼   ► to the team that made the product on the product,

00:05:08 ◼   ► you know, permanently, more or less,

00:05:10 ◼   ► it will slowly get worse in relation to the competition

00:05:14 ◼   ► and in relation to other applications.

00:05:16 ◼   ► And that seems to be what's happening

00:05:17 ◼   ► with a lot of Apple's applications.

00:05:18 ◼   ► So just to clarify, it's not saying that

00:05:20 ◼   ► if you are a developer and you make an image editing app,

00:05:22 ◼   ► you are doomed forever in that company

00:05:24 ◼   ► to work on an image editing app forever.

00:05:26 ◼   ► You are not, but you have to leave a team behind,

00:05:29 ◼   ► more or less, and not a tiny little maintenance team

00:05:32 ◼   ► or a team of like B and C players

00:05:34 ◼   ► or any other way where you think you're going to save money or time, you're doing your company

00:05:38 ◼   ► and your customers a disservice.

00:05:40 ◼   ► That's hard.

00:05:41 ◼   ► And it's also interesting with consulting because in my experience, what happens is

00:05:47 ◼   ► a company will either not have the manpower or perhaps the expertise to do some sort of

00:05:55 ◼   ► project.

00:05:56 ◼   ► And so in my day job, they'll call in some of our people.

00:06:02 ◼   ► We don't do staff aug despite the way I just described it.

00:06:04 ◼   ► What we really do is that we get a team of our own people together and we'll work on

00:06:10 ◼   ► this project for usually a few months.

00:06:12 ◼   ► And then at the end of that project, typically what happens is we'll have a very small

00:06:16 ◼   ► crew that stays behind, figuratively speaking, in order to do some final maintenance and

00:06:23 ◼   ► warranty work.

00:06:24 ◼   ► But then after that, we usually punt it back to the client and their internal team in order

00:06:28 ◼   ► to maintain.

00:06:29 ◼   ► And sometimes it goes really well when clients have really good internal teams and kind of

00:06:33 ◼   ► know what's up.

00:06:34 ◼   ► But sometimes that does not go well at all.

00:06:37 ◼   ► And we hear later on through the grapevine that the client doesn't have the appropriate

00:06:41 ◼   ► expertise even when they think they do.

00:06:45 ◼   ► And that creates some real problems.

00:06:46 ◼   ► But there's not much we can do about that because it sounds extremely self-serving.

00:06:51 ◼   ► And it is kind of self-serving for us to say, "Oh, well, why don't you keep us on retainer

00:06:55 ◼   ► forever?"

00:06:57 ◼   ► And we'll be around just in case.

00:07:00 ◼   ► It's just not the way it works.

00:07:01 ◼   ► And especially when you work for a fairly progressive firm like I do.

00:07:04 ◼   ► Well, granted we do the Microsoft Stack, which some of you probably don't think is progressive,

00:07:08 ◼   ► but within our Microsoft world, we're very progressive.

00:07:12 ◼   ► And in a lot of our code, a novice or even intermediate level programmer would probably

00:07:17 ◼   ► have a hard time digesting.

00:07:20 ◼   ► And doubly so if it's a programmer that's never seen the code until the time in which

00:07:25 ◼   ► which we throw it over the wall and walk away.

00:07:28 ◼   ► That happens even inside a single company. Forget about outside consultants or anything.

00:07:32 ◼   ► Very often, and maybe this even happens at Apple, I don't know, but you'll have a team

00:07:36 ◼   ► that will make a product, and it's not like the team that made the product is necessarily

00:07:39 ◼   ► more experienced or better programmers or anything than any other people, but they understand

00:07:44 ◼   ► the product. They understand why it was designed the way it was designed. They understand the

00:07:47 ◼   ► design itself. And if those people go off without transitioning, it's like, "Oh, you

00:07:52 ◼   ► work on the product and then it goes into whatever maintenance mode or into general

00:07:57 ◼   ► purpose release where anyone in the company is allowed to address bugs in it or whatever.

00:08:02 ◼   ► If it's sort of like, "Okay, now any developer in the company can fix a bug," those developers

00:08:08 ◼   ► likely don't understand the design of the application, how it puts together, what the

00:08:11 ◼   ► invariants are supposed to be.

00:08:12 ◼   ► And you're like, "Well, it should be documented and there should be design documents and there

00:08:16 ◼   ► should be good comments and it should be..."

00:08:17 ◼   ► Yeah, all should, should, should.

00:08:18 ◼   ► But the reality is, programmers are not interchangeable parts.

00:08:22 ◼   ► And there's a core team of people who understand the product.

00:08:24 ◼   ► And unless you transition them away from the product,

00:08:27 ◼   ► assuming they want to go away from it, by socializing the new developers,

00:08:30 ◼   ► about bringing the new guy on board, teaching him how everything works,

00:08:33 ◼   ► have that person improve the documentation.

00:08:35 ◼   ► So you can't just throw it out into the wild.

00:08:37 ◼   ► Because then you get people doing things in the code

00:08:39 ◼   ► where it looks perfectly fine, and it's simple enough,

00:08:41 ◼   ► and they understand it, and it works.

00:08:43 ◼   ► But they've violated some unspoken invariant

00:08:45 ◼   ► that everybody who was on the original team understands has to be true.

00:08:48 ◼   ► but there were no assertions for it,

00:08:50 ◼   ► or there was no design documents specifying,

00:08:51 ◼   ► or maybe there was and they didn't see it.

00:08:53 ◼   ► And the accumulation of those just eats away

00:08:56 ◼   ► at the quality of the code,

00:08:57 ◼   ► makes it more difficult to change down the line.

00:09:00 ◼   ► There's no such thing as like,

00:09:02 ◼   ► except for for like a government software,

00:09:04 ◼   ► defense department software,

00:09:05 ◼   ► there's no such thing as maintenance mode.

00:09:06 ◼   ► If you have a product and you're selling it to customers,

00:09:08 ◼   ► you need developers who understand it

00:09:09 ◼   ► actively working on it.

00:09:10 ◼   ► Another follow-up item, we were talking about

00:09:13 ◼   ► where computers are going in the future

00:09:16 ◼   ► in the last show, I think,

00:09:17 ◼   ► And I was talking about unification of the memory

00:09:21 ◼   ► and storage hierarchies.

00:09:24 ◼   ► So the hierarchy would still be there,

00:09:25 ◼   ► but from a software perspective, everything

00:09:27 ◼   ► is addressable as an address in memory,

00:09:29 ◼   ► even if it's backed by flash or regular RAM or caches on a chip

00:09:35 ◼   ► or registers, the whole hierarchy,

00:09:37 ◼   ► but addressable in the same way, sort of homogeneous view

00:09:40 ◼   ► of heterogeneous hardware.

00:09:43 ◼   ► And a lot of people were in with examples

00:09:44 ◼   ► of systems that do that.

00:09:47 ◼   ► Last time I brought this up, a lot of people wrote in

00:09:48 ◼   ► talking about memory mapping files and stuff like that.

00:09:51 ◼   ► And of course, there are many, many examples

00:09:53 ◼   ► on the computers that we're all sitting in front of

00:09:54 ◼   ► right now and even on our iPods

00:09:56 ◼   ► or whatever you're listening to those on,

00:09:58 ◼   ► of miniature versions of those.

00:09:59 ◼   ► Memory mapping files is the most common example

00:10:02 ◼   ► where you, instead of doing IO on a file,

00:10:04 ◼   ► you just pretend, hey, now the entire contents of that file

00:10:06 ◼   ► is mapped into memory.

00:10:07 ◼   ► It's not really, but that's how you address it.

00:10:09 ◼   ► And when you address those pieces of memory,

00:10:11 ◼   ► it just says, okay, well,

00:10:11 ◼   ► I don't actually have that information.

00:10:13 ◼   ► It's still on disk, so I'm gonna go get it from disk,

00:10:14 ◼   ► pull it in for you, and then make it look like

00:10:16 ◼   ► it was in that memory all along.

00:10:18 ◼   ► And virtual memory works in a similar manner

00:10:21 ◼   ► with memory mapping.

00:10:23 ◼   ► And we talked about the PlayStation and the game

00:10:26 ◼   ► consoles, where they don't have separate pools of RAM and VRAM.

00:10:29 ◼   ► And of course, there's the good version

00:10:30 ◼   ► of that, where it's one big giant pool of fast RAM.

00:10:32 ◼   ► And there's the crappy version of that,

00:10:34 ◼   ► which PCs used to do in the bad old days,

00:10:36 ◼   ► where they didn't want to give you dedicated VRAM.

00:10:38 ◼   ► They would use your main memory as video RAM.

00:10:39 ◼   ► And it was really bad performance,

00:10:41 ◼   ► because video memory could be tuned to video tasks better.

00:10:44 ◼   ► And on the older computers, there used to be regions of memory that corresponded to

00:10:49 ◼   ► IO interfaces, regions of memory that corresponded to the screen.

00:10:52 ◼   ► So when you wrote to that region of memory, you were really writing to video memory.

00:10:55 ◼   ► They would show up on the screen directly and all sorts of other things.

00:10:58 ◼   ► The big one that most people wrote about was the AS400, which I had completely forgotten about.

00:11:04 ◼   ► And I'm sure most people don't work on it and have completely forgotten about it.

00:11:07 ◼   ► In fact, they renamed AS400 to I5 or System I or some-- I don't know.

00:11:12 ◼   ► I don't know, IBM's always changing their name stuff.

00:11:14 ◼   ► I haven't kept up with this stuff.

00:11:15 ◼   ► But anyway, this is a very old system based on an even older system from the

00:11:19 ◼   ► sixties that does what they call a single level store, which is exactly what I was

00:11:22 ◼   ► talking about.

00:11:23 ◼   ► Uh, just addressing everything as if it was a memory address, even when it's not,

00:11:29 ◼   ► uh, we should put these links in the show if people want to read about it.

00:11:32 ◼   ► But a lot of the technology that you've heard this before of like, uh, in other

00:11:36 ◼   ► realms where things appear on supercars and, or Mercedes or whatever, like

00:11:40 ◼   ► Candy Lock breaks in airbags and gradually trickle their way down until your Ford Festiva

00:11:43 ◼   ► has all those features a decade later.

00:11:46 ◼   ► The trickle down happens similarly in computers.

00:11:48 ◼   ► We're going from mainframes and supercomputers down to your phone.

00:11:53 ◼   ► But it happens unevenly and it seems like sometimes a little bit slower.

00:11:56 ◼   ► And there are still things that mainframes or whatever you would call mainframes today

00:11:59 ◼   ► or whatever, still things those systems can do that our systems can't do and we're

00:12:05 ◼   ► still waiting for them to trickle down.

00:12:06 ◼   ► like being able to hot-swap CPUs and hardware redundancy and sort of self-healing type features.

00:12:13 ◼   ► And it's like, "Well, you don't need that on my PC," or, "It's only for things that have to run

00:12:17 ◼   ► 24/7." There's lots of excuses for why these things haven't trickled down, and they make sense.

00:12:20 ◼   ► But I would think that, inevitably, anything that's a good idea up there is eventually going

00:12:25 ◼   ► to find its way down. So a single-level store, I think, is a reasonably good idea and will

00:12:29 ◼   ► eventually find its way down into your wristwatch, pinky ring, contact lens computer in the decades

00:12:36 ◼   ► needs to come. And the other features like hardware redundancy and the ability to heal

00:12:42 ◼   ► and stuff, I think that's a whole other topic for another day that I'll maybe throw in there.

00:12:45 ◼   ► But I have some other interesting ideas about the future of computing, but I don't think

00:12:49 ◼   ► the follow-up is the place for them.

00:12:51 ◼   ► If it ends up being pinky rings, I think I'm out.

00:12:54 ◼   ► It'll be so old by then, it probably won't be safe for us to put on pinky rings. Our

00:13:00 ◼   ► fingers will swell and they'll get stuck on. We'll have to go to the ER to get them cut

00:13:04 ◼   ► off.

00:13:05 ◼   ► Oh goodness. Alright, so do we want to talk about PlayStation 4s now?

00:13:08 ◼   ► Yeah, that's one little item I threw in. I'm trying not to pay too much attention to CES.

00:13:12 ◼   ► I mean, CES is just so gross. Like, I've never been interested in it.

00:13:16 ◼   ► It's disappointing to me, even when I had an interest, like, I would like to see what the new TVs coming out are,

00:13:22 ◼   ► but that is such... that's the worst possible venue. I would like to know about new TVs.

00:13:25 ◼   ► I've, you know, redecided the sales, but the spectacle of CES adds nothing to that.

00:13:30 ◼   ► In fact, it subtracts from it. I wish all the companies making announcements that I'm interested in at CES

00:13:34 ◼   ► made those same announcements with a YouTube video or a press

00:13:37 ◼   ► release.

00:13:39 ◼   ► Anything other than a staged presentation at CES.

00:13:41 ◼   ► It seems like CES represents the worst of the hardware

00:13:45 ◼   ► industry.

00:13:46 ◼   ► It's so much tone deafness, sexism, weird products.

00:13:53 ◼   ► It's not the worst of the hardware industry.

00:13:55 ◼   ► It's the worst of humanity.

00:13:57 ◼   ► Well, and the products that are announced there--

00:14:02 ◼   ► and people are now doing the best of CES

00:14:04 ◼   ► and stuff like that, the products that are announced there

00:14:06 ◼   ► so rarely make it into production,

00:14:09 ◼   ► or when they do make it into production,

00:14:11 ◼   ► they have a lot of problems that the CES version

00:14:14 ◼   ► glossed over or didn't have, or a lot of limitations,

00:14:17 ◼   ► or something like that.

00:14:18 ◼   ► It's basically like, it's a way for the industry

00:14:22 ◼   ► to celebrate itself under the guise of announcing

00:14:25 ◼   ► things to the world and showing off what's new,

00:14:27 ◼   ► but in reality, most of the things shown off

00:14:28 ◼   ► there either aren't interesting, or are interesting,

00:14:31 ◼   ► but are also fantasies that will never hit the market.

00:14:34 ◼   ► It seems like the press has a real hard time covering CES.

00:14:37 ◼   ► And the problem with CES seems to be that no one, including the people presenting and

00:14:42 ◼   ► the people covering it, can differentiate, seems to be able to differentiate between

00:14:46 ◼   ► the stuff that is obviously ridiculous crap and that in the light of day when you wake

00:14:50 ◼   ► up when it's all over you go, "Why the hell were we ever paying attention to that?"

00:14:53 ◼   ► And things that are interesting news, because it all starts to look the same in this big

00:14:58 ◼   ► funhouse atmosphere.

00:15:00 ◼   ► Whereas if you had just looked at those things individually, there's no way you would cover

00:15:03 ◼   ► that.

00:15:04 ◼   ► If someone put out a press release on their site and put up this information about some

00:15:06 ◼   ► crazy thing that no one's ever going to use, you would skip it.

00:15:10 ◼   ► But because it's at CES, everything sort of gets equal treatment.

00:15:12 ◼   ► So I don't know.

00:15:15 ◼   ► Like I'm interested in what Valve is saying there.

00:15:17 ◼   ► I'm interested in the new television technology.

00:15:19 ◼   ► I'm interested in some of the new, you know, the Steam Box stuff and the camera tech and

00:15:24 ◼   ► stuff.

00:15:25 ◼   ► But all that stuff doesn't need that surrounding dazzle and ridiculousness.

00:15:30 ◼   ► If you just have interesting products to announce them, I don't know.

00:15:34 ◼   ► Anyway, this isn't really CES related.

00:15:36 ◼   ► I don't know why it went off on that tangent, but maybe they did announce it in CES.

00:15:40 ◼   ► I don't know.

00:15:41 ◼   ► There's a story that Sony announced how many PlayStation 4s they sold, and they said it's

00:15:46 ◼   ► 4.2 million.

00:15:49 ◼   ► And Microsoft announced about a week ago that they had sold 3 million Xbox One consoles.

00:15:53 ◼   ► So we talked when the PlayStation 4 launched, they sold a million in 24 hours, and the Xbox

00:15:58 ◼   ► Similar numbers from like oh, that's fine as the early adopters. Let's see if they can sustain that it looks like they're both consoles

00:16:03 ◼   ► They're doing pretty well

00:16:05 ◼   ► More or less neck-and-neck PlayStation 4 may be a little bit ahead

00:16:08 ◼   ► But I think I think the PlayStation 4 is still supply constrained and it seems like from pictures

00:16:13 ◼   ► I see of people in Twitter that if you wanted an Xbox one you could go into a store and see a big stack of

00:16:17 ◼   ► Green boxes and pick one. I'm not sure if that's entirely true, but I know from experience

00:16:21 ◼   ► That you cannot just stroll into a store and pick up a ps4 at this point because I've looked online

00:16:27 ◼   ► I looked at it not hard, but you know I'm just curious like if I'm in a store that sells

00:16:30 ◼   ► but I'll just look and see if they have any and they don't and

00:16:32 ◼   ► Occasionally, I'll look online and see oh do any of these things have it available for order and they don't

00:16:36 ◼   ► So I think it's still harder to get a PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 is selling more

00:16:41 ◼   ► So maybe they're farther ahead than we think but either way both of them doing very very well

00:16:45 ◼   ► I would say that this new console generation is off to a strong start

00:16:47 ◼   ► Are there any games that people actually want yet?

00:16:50 ◼   ► That's the thing like I don't think there's there's some good games coming out like I mean Sony was showing us

00:16:55 ◼   ► Microsoft showing off Titanfall, and Sony has a couple of good titles in the works,

00:16:59 ◼   ► but there's no big system seller games.

00:17:02 ◼   ► The typical franchise games that are on all the platforms that you could also play on

00:17:05 ◼   ► a PC, but who cares?

00:17:06 ◼   ► It's not like either one of these platforms is being propelled by some must-have exclusive

00:17:10 ◼   ► game like Halo or something.

00:17:12 ◼   ► People just want new consoles.

00:17:14 ◼   ► Now I wonder, so in previous launches there's usually been maybe one system out of the bunch

00:17:20 ◼   ► that didn't have any must-have games on launch.

00:17:23 ◼   ► Has there ever been a generation before this where none of them had any must-have games

00:17:27 ◼   ► on launch?

00:17:28 ◼   ► Oh yeah, sure.

00:17:29 ◼   ► I mean, well, like, a lot of times they would launch with a couple of, like, I mean, let's

00:17:35 ◼   ► think of the GameCube did not have must-have games at launch.

00:17:38 ◼   ► Like, the Xbox One, you say, "Oh, it had a must-have game, it had Halo."

00:17:42 ◼   ► Well, people didn't know if Halo was going to be any good.

00:17:44 ◼   ► It was the first Halo game.

00:17:45 ◼   ► Like, I don't think that was making people go out and buy an original Xbox, because it

00:17:50 ◼   ► it was kind of an unknown quantity. Maybe a few Mac users who had followed Bungie thought

00:17:54 ◼   ► it was awesome, but everyone else was like, "Halo? What? I don't know about that." I mean,

00:17:58 ◼   ► I don't remember if the PS2 had, I guess, had a Ridge Racer or something. But consoles

00:18:02 ◼   ► settle in. And the reason I thought these two new consoles would do well is, as I said

00:18:07 ◼   ► I think on a previous show, that for many people of the age to be having enough of disposable

00:18:13 ◼   ► income to buy their own consoles or to get their parents to buy them, this is their first

00:18:16 ◼   ► new console generation. Their whole life they've been using, like their PlayStation 3s and

00:18:21 ◼   ► Xbox 360s and maybe the previous generation from their older siblings or whatever, this

00:18:25 ◼   ► is the first console generation they're living through after seven or eight long years of

00:18:29 ◼   ► using all the past tech. So I think the market was ripe for tons and tons of people who want

00:18:35 ◼   ► a shiny new thing, people who aren't grizzled veterans of many console generations. And

00:18:41 ◼   ► it seems like that was the case.

00:18:42 ◼   ► I have to imagine this must be building a lifelong disappointment in game systems for

00:18:47 ◼   ► some of these people, though. If the very first awesome thing they're looking forward

00:18:51 ◼   ► to getting this game system, the very first new game system comes out for some eight-year-old,

00:18:56 ◼   ► and they get it, and there's only four games for it, and they're all kind of mediocre,

00:19:02 ◼   ► is that a great experience?

00:19:04 ◼   ► That's part of the experience. Having been through many console generations, part of

00:19:08 ◼   ► the experience is getting super excited about the console and then even if you're lucky,

00:19:12 ◼   ► even if you get it and you're like, "I'm getting a Nintendo 64 and it's going to have

00:19:14 ◼   ► Mario 64, it's going to blow my brains out." And it totally does. It's an amazing game.

00:19:19 ◼   ► Everybody loves it. And then you play it and you're like, "Okay, what else can I get?"

00:19:23 ◼   ► It's like, "And pilot wings." It's like nothing. And then you're like, "Well, I guess..."

00:19:29 ◼   ► Well, there was Wave Race. That wasn't bad.

00:19:31 ◼   ► Oh, Wave Race is great.

00:19:33 ◼   ► But the launch games are usually not the best games. And even if there's one that's really

00:19:37 ◼   ► great. Maybe if you're lucky you get one that's really great. Consoles have a life cycle,

00:19:42 ◼   ► and for kids who don't know this, they're going to learn the hard lesson. Also, the

00:19:45 ◼   ► hard lesson of the software in the modern age, the software that comes at launch day

00:19:48 ◼   ► sucks and needs to be patched a million times and doesn't have half the features you want

00:19:51 ◼   ► and is buggy as hell. And just wait. There's a life cycle. This is the beginning part.

00:19:56 ◼   ► It has good parts. Exciting to get it on launch day. Exciting to be the first one to have

00:19:59 ◼   ► it. And bad because the games are just ports or multi-platform titles and the few exclusives

00:20:04 ◼   ► you play through or aren't interested in and then you just wait. It's all part of the process.

00:20:09 ◼   ► I think it's making a new generation of gamers.

00:20:13 ◼   ► And now we even have a lot of hardware problems, too. Have you been following Matthew Panzareno's

00:20:17 ◼   ► saga of trying to get an Xbox One?

00:20:20 ◼   ► Yes!

00:20:21 ◼   ► He's gotten five of them broken so far.

00:20:23 ◼   ► You would think of all the companies in the entire world that should be wary of carefully

00:20:28 ◼   ► designed hardware, but it would be Microsoft. And this is probably just a fluke, because

00:20:31 ◼   ► I haven't heard any.

00:20:32 ◼   ► You know, he's just getting unlucky, but after the Red Ring of Death and billions of

00:20:37 ◼   ► dollars in write-downs for hardware replacements and people being on their sixth and seventh

00:20:41 ◼   ► Xbox 360, surely Microsoft got it right this time.

00:20:45 ◼   ► Apparently not.

00:20:46 ◼   ► Well, the funny thing is, too, apparently the biggest source of their problems is the

00:20:49 ◼   ► disk drive.

00:20:51 ◼   ► You would think, I mean, is it that new of a thing?

00:20:54 ◼   ► Like, you would think we would know how to make reliable optical disk drives in 2014.

00:20:59 ◼   ► Every time I think about this, I just keep thinking back and back to PlayStation 3, and

00:21:02 ◼   ► that machine should have fallen apart in people's hands.

00:21:05 ◼   ► Like the crazy cell processor, and the first thing with the Blu-ray drive, and waiting

00:21:09 ◼   ► for the stupid blue lasers, and all this like, I don't understand.

00:21:12 ◼   ► And then, like, PlayStations have just, you know, been fine.

00:21:16 ◼   ► And it doesn't make any sense that Microsoft screwed it up with the much more conservative

00:21:20 ◼   ► approach.

00:21:21 ◼   ► They're going even more conservative now, and they're having these hard drive problems.

00:21:23 ◼   ► I don't understand.

00:21:24 ◼   ► I mean, there's something to be said for Sony's decades and decades of experience building

00:21:29 ◼   ► consumer electronics and Microsoft's considerably smaller amount of experience.

00:21:33 ◼   ► Yeah, I guess the real Xbox One was just a fluke because it was fine.

00:21:38 ◼   ► Like, the very first Xbox, it was a PC crammed into a not-that-small box, and it was fine.

00:21:43 ◼   ► Like, you know, you would think it would have overheated somewhat or had other problems.

00:21:46 ◼   ► Nope, it was fine.

00:21:47 ◼   ► I'd never heard of widespread problems, although I guess it didn't sell that well either, so.

00:21:50 ◼   ► Well, I mean, they're cursed by the 360.

00:21:53 ◼   ► The reason it's shaped the way it was is because Xbox is huge, LOL, right?

00:21:57 ◼   ► And so they made the successor...

00:21:59 ◼   ► It's pronounced "LOL."

00:22:00 ◼   ► All right.

00:22:01 ◼   ► Well, anyway, they made the successor.

00:22:03 ◼   ► It's skinny.

00:22:04 ◼   ► See, it's practically like an hourglass.

00:22:05 ◼   ► Look how skinny it is, and maybe you shouldn't have quite made it so skinny because you could

00:22:08 ◼   ► have more room for cooling, and yeah.

00:22:10 ◼   ► It wasn't even that skinny.

00:22:11 ◼   ► Well, I know, but you saw what they were going for.

00:22:14 ◼   ► We don't want to make a gigantic bot, and they should have.

00:22:16 ◼   ► The Xbox One is pretty big, and so is the PlayStation 4, for that matter.

00:22:20 ◼   ► We'll see.

00:22:21 ◼   ► I still think Panzer's thing could just be bad luck.

00:22:25 ◼   ► It's not like if we start seeing stories and if this gets a name like Red Ring of Death,

00:22:29 ◼   ► then we'll know it's an issue.

00:22:32 ◼   ► Do we want to answer the question, "Who needs a Mac Pro?"

00:22:35 ◼   ► Yeah, I threw this in there because, again, with me whining about what kind of computer

00:22:42 ◼   ► I'm going to get and whether I'm going to buy a new Mac Pro, lots of people—this

00:22:44 ◼   ► one common strain of feedback, which is, "What do you need a Mac Pro for?"

00:22:51 ◼   ► And for Marco, too, "What does Marco need a Mac for?

00:22:53 ◼   ► You guys don't need this computer."

00:22:55 ◼   ► And this kind of logic and argument and questioning, like, "What is it that you're doing that you

00:23:00 ◼   ► need a Mac Pro?"

00:23:01 ◼   ► "I was getting it even for my current computer."

00:23:03 ◼   ► "What games are you playing specifically that you need a fancy video card?"

00:23:07 ◼   ► And there's a snarky answer, like I just gave on Twitter, which is, well, for future games,

00:23:11 ◼   ► for games I don't have now.

00:23:12 ◼   ► That's why you buy, that's why one of the reasons I buy a big fancy computer is not

00:23:16 ◼   ► for the games that are out now, but for the games that are going to be out two, three,

00:23:19 ◼   ► four years from now, I want to be able to play those two without getting a new computer.

00:23:21 ◼   ► But anyway, that's besides the point.

00:23:23 ◼   ► This line of reasoning of like, you need to have a practical reason for this thing that

00:23:31 ◼   ► you're getting, otherwise you shouldn't get it, only seems to apply in certain situations.

00:23:36 ◼   ► Certainly it applies in the situation where we're talking about big expensive computers,

00:23:40 ◼   ► but I was trying to think of other situations where people are comfortable with it not applying.

00:23:45 ◼   ► Having trouble coming up with good examples, I guess I thought of like, if you get a bigger

00:23:48 ◼   ► TV, occasionally I guess someone might ask, "What do you need a TV that big for?"

00:23:54 ◼   ► For the most part, people understand you're not getting a big TV because like, "Well,

00:23:56 ◼   ► I watch golf a lot and I was having trouble seeing the ball, so I need a bigger television

00:24:00 ◼   ► so the ball is bigger."

00:24:02 ◼   ► People kind of intuitively understand that it's more sort of immersive and exciting to

00:24:08 ◼   ► look at a bigger screen than a smaller one.

00:24:09 ◼   ► So when you say you got a bigger TV, people don't say, "Why did you get a bigger one?

00:24:14 ◼   ► What is it that you want?"

00:24:15 ◼   ► Like, literally asking, like, "Is there some kind of program that you watched that was

00:24:18 ◼   ► not working correctly with your smaller television and now will work with a bigger one?"

00:24:23 ◼   ► Or, "Why do you need granite countertops?

00:24:25 ◼   ► What was wrong with your other?

00:24:26 ◼   ► Do you do something?

00:24:27 ◼   ► Do you do certain kind of cooking that only works on granite?

00:24:29 ◼   ► Do you do pastry dough where you need to suck away the heat?"

00:24:31 ◼   ► And it's like, sometimes you just want to have countertops that look like nice shiny

00:24:34 ◼   ► granite.

00:24:35 ◼   ► Like, that's the answer.

00:24:36 ◼   ► And the same thing with the computer.

00:24:38 ◼   ► I feel like saying it—there are reasons why I might want to get it, but not everything

00:24:44 ◼   ► has to be in need.

00:24:45 ◼   ► There's such an idea of a luxury item, and everyone chooses what their luxury items are.

00:24:50 ◼   ► Maybe your luxury item is very fancy furniture or a nice house or jewelry or a really expensive

00:24:55 ◼   ► watch or lots of vacations or whatever.

00:24:58 ◼   ► But yeah.

00:24:59 ◼   ► But it's like, certainly, I think, you know, I think that's a good thing.

00:25:00 ◼   ► I think that's a good thing.

00:25:01 ◼   ► I think that's a good thing.

00:25:02 ◼   ► I think that's a good thing.

00:25:03 ◼   ► I think that's a good thing.

00:25:04 ◼   ► I think that's a good thing.

00:25:05 ◼   ► I think that's a good thing.

00:25:06 ◼   ► certain things people accept as indulgences or as a hobby interest or whatever, and other

00:25:11 ◼   ► things people don't accept as an indulgence and demand justification. You must have an

00:25:15 ◼   ► actual need. Are you running Maya? Maybe you just want to have a fast computer because

00:25:19 ◼   ► you're into technology and fast computers are fun to have. I think that's a perfectly

00:25:23 ◼   ► valid reason. It's a large part of my reason and I assume a large part of Marco's reason.

00:25:27 ◼   ► I don't think anyone should ever get caught in the idea where they have to justify through

00:25:32 ◼   ► work-related examples, or even leisure-related examples, like, "Well, show me the game that

00:25:36 ◼   ► needs this video card." That's a ridiculous example anyway, because you don't need to

00:25:40 ◼   ► play games, period. If I gave you one, you're like, "All right, well, now I see why you

00:25:42 ◼   ► need one." Why? Because I need to play this first-person shooter? Why do you need to play

00:25:45 ◼   ► the first-person shooter? That we accept as fun. You're allowed to play a game just because

00:25:48 ◼   ► it's fun, but you're not allowed to have a fast computer just because it's fun. So the

00:25:51 ◼   ► only way you can justify the computer is to point to the game you're going to play, which

00:25:55 ◼   ► I accept that you're allowed to use because it's fun.

00:25:57 ◼   ► Yeah, I think part of it is it's a combination of a few factors. Like part of that, like

00:26:01 ◼   ► why do you need this, is that these are very expensive items. And so it's alienating to

00:26:07 ◼   ► say, you know, like buying expensive cars, it's alienating to say like, "Oh, I got this

00:26:11 ◼   ► car that's really, really expensive that you can't afford." Like that's, people don't like

00:26:15 ◼   ► hearing that. It's not a great thing to spread around. And computers are not as expensive

00:26:20 ◼   ► as cars, but they're still very expensive. And they're like, computers like the Mac Pro

00:26:24 ◼   ► are unaffordable to many people. And so there's that aspect.

00:26:29 ◼   ► The other aspect is that computers do have this weird blend of some people need it for.

00:26:34 ◼   ► Like, you know, nobody needs a TV for work except J.D. Harmeyer. Nobody else needs a

00:26:39 ◼   ► TV for work. And, you know, we all use computers for work nowadays. I mean, not everybody,

00:26:44 ◼   ► but everyone talking on this show and probably a lot of the listeners. We all use computers

00:26:49 ◼   ► for work. And we also use computers for hobbies and for leisure and for entertainment. And

00:26:55 ◼   ► so it's... there are people who do need the Mac Pro for work. You know, if you're a professional

00:27:00 ◼   ► video editor that's working with 4K content, you are probably going to need it. You know,

00:27:07 ◼   ► if you're doing certain other things, you probably need it too, but it's... the number

00:27:10 ◼   ► of people who need the Mac Pro or who need, like, all the way decked out, laptop or iMac,

00:27:17 ◼   ► a pretty small number, really. But you're right, you know, I think it's just distorted because

00:27:21 ◼   ► some people do need them for work, but for most of us, it's just we want things to be nicer and

00:27:26 ◼   ► a little bit faster. I mean, the granite countertop is an example too. Some people need a granite

00:27:30 ◼   ► countertop if they're pastry chefs or, you know, because you, what is it, because it doesn't take

00:27:35 ◼   ► the heat out of the dough as fast or something? I don't remember. There's a reason why you need

00:27:38 ◼   ► granite countertops. Does it melt the butter? You could conceivably, yeah, you could conceivably

00:27:42 ◼   ► needs one. But then most people don't get them for that reason. In the chat room, one

00:27:47 ◼   ► person pointed out that like, well, the difference between not needing to play a game is that

00:27:52 ◼   ► games are less expensive than a Mac Pro. Well, super high end games, like you want to play

00:27:57 ◼   ► Crysis 3, the game may not be expensive, but the computer that you need to run it decently

00:28:00 ◼   ► certainly is. But anyway, you know, prices are relative. Like, this Mac Pro may seem

00:28:05 ◼   ► like a super expensive thing where I had to buy it, but compare it to the cost of living

00:28:09 ◼   ► living in a nicer neighborhood, going on more vacations, or like all the other things that

00:28:13 ◼   ► people can spend their money on. Like, you know, if we all wanted to live as cheaply

00:28:17 ◼   ► as possible, we would not have half of the things that we have. I mean, we would get

00:28:21 ◼   ► into a career that doesn't involve computers and we'd all be farmers or something.

00:28:25 ◼   ► Right. And, you know, it's all about, like, you know, how you spend your time. Like, you

00:28:29 ◼   ► know, for me, like, I spend so much time in front of a computer every day. Like, you know,

00:28:34 ◼   ► there's a thing I tweeted forever ago that has gotten the most retweets of anything I've

00:28:39 ◼   ► tweeted and it's something on the lines of if you sit on, look at, or touch something

00:28:45 ◼   ► for more than two hours a day, spend whatever it takes to get the best. And so that includes

00:28:49 ◼   ► keyboards, mice, your chair. If you sit at a desk all day, you better have a nice chair,

00:28:54 ◼   ► a nice keyboard, a nice mouse, and a nice monitor. You know, the things that you use

00:29:00 ◼   ► all the time, you should get nice things. It's always good to get a good mattress to

00:29:04 ◼   ► sleep on. You know, like that for lots of reasons including comfort, but also like,

00:29:07 ◼   ► like your back and stuff like that.

00:29:09 ◼   ► If you have the ability to spend,

00:29:16 ◼   ► to get a premium version of something,

00:29:18 ◼   ► the wisest things to spend that on

00:29:20 ◼   ► are the things that will have the most impact

00:29:22 ◼   ► to your everyday life, generally speaking.

00:29:24 ◼   ► And so the difference between a good monitor

00:29:28 ◼   ► and a horrible monitor,

00:29:29 ◼   ► you'll notice that every single day for hours.

00:29:31 ◼   ► The difference between a good bed and a crappy bed,

00:29:34 ◼   ► you're gonna be lying in it for eight hours a day, you hope.

00:29:37 ◼   ► that's going to catch up with you.

00:29:40 ◼   ► And so the computer, for people like us,

00:29:42 ◼   ► is one of those things.

00:29:43 ◼   ► If you actually will even notice the difference, ever,

00:29:49 ◼   ► it's probably worth it.

00:29:50 ◼   ► Like it's probably worth it to get a really nice computer.

00:29:52 ◼   ► If you do anything at all, for any reasonable amount of time

00:29:55 ◼   ► during the day, that might stretch your computer.

00:29:57 ◼   ► It's worth it to get the best one that you

00:29:58 ◼   ► can get that fits your needs.

00:30:00 ◼   ► By bringing in the time spent in front of device metric,

00:30:04 ◼   ► you're trying to drag this back to pragmatism.

00:30:06 ◼   ► I'm trying to take it away.

00:30:07 ◼   ► I'm trying to say, "No, there's no reason to justify it in a pragmatic, rational manner

00:30:12 ◼   ► for things like this."

00:30:14 ◼   ► Some people just want a really fancy table saw.

00:30:17 ◼   ► What do they do with that fancy table saw?

00:30:19 ◼   ► They make little wooden things that they never give to anyone, don't sell, and aren't useful

00:30:23 ◼   ► in any way.

00:30:24 ◼   ► That's their hobby.

00:30:25 ◼   ► That's what they want to do.

00:30:26 ◼   ► "Oh, you don't need a $10,000 table saw."

00:30:27 ◼   ► No, he does not need a $10,000 table saw because he's not making money from it.

00:30:31 ◼   ► In fact, it's a money sink.

00:30:33 ◼   ► He just makes little wooden things and puts them in his house and it makes him happy.

00:30:36 ◼   ► And that's what he wants to spend his money on.

00:30:38 ◼   ► Ten thousand dollar table saw.

00:30:39 ◼   ► I'm not saying that you should justify what you spend extra money on by how much it will

00:30:46 ◼   ► make you money-wise.

00:30:47 ◼   ► I'm saying just by how much you will enjoy it.

00:30:50 ◼   ► That example fits my rationale perfectly.

00:30:52 ◼   ► If you're going to actually use a table saw more than once a year, get a great one.

00:30:58 ◼   ► Why not?

00:30:59 ◼   ► If you can, if you have the ability to, and that will make you that happy, then that's

00:31:04 ◼   ► worth doing for you.

00:31:06 ◼   ► If you don't care, that's fine.

00:31:08 ◼   ► If you can't afford it, do your best.

00:31:11 ◼   ► If you want to spend the money elsewhere, fine.

00:31:14 ◼   ► I get zero enjoyment out of wearing fancy clothes.

00:31:17 ◼   ► So every day I wear a $7 t-shirt and a very worn out pair of jeans that I bought from

00:31:22 ◼   ► Amazon.

00:31:23 ◼   ► Everything I wear I can buy from Amazon when it wears out, which I love.

00:31:26 ◼   ► I've worked for years to get to this point.

00:31:27 ◼   ► It's amazing because I hate shopping.

00:31:30 ◼   ► All that stuff, like I drive a really nice car, I have a really nice computer, but I

00:31:33 ◼   ► wear crap clothes.

00:31:35 ◼   ► There's a lot of things I don't care about because this is where I spend my time, this

00:31:40 ◼   ► is where I get my enjoyment.

00:31:41 ◼   ► So it is a combination of luxury and treating yourself to the things you like and being

00:31:48 ◼   ► kind of analytical about where you spend that extra money to give you the maximum fun or

00:31:55 ◼   ► happiness benefit.

00:31:56 ◼   ► Okay, KJ Healey posted two four-line posts in the chat room, so that means he demands

00:32:03 ◼   ► to be heard, so I'll address his point here.

00:32:05 ◼   ► Is that all it seems?

00:32:07 ◼   ► The problem is that Mac Pro, for hobbyists who could afford it, is that it's still not

00:32:10 ◼   ► the premium thing they wanted.

00:32:11 ◼   ► It's like you wanted the best granite countertops to cook on, but Apple gave you decent countertops,

00:32:15 ◼   ► but also two huge fridges you don't have much use for.

00:32:19 ◼   ► That may be true of some people.

00:32:20 ◼   ► For me, specifically, it's like Apple gave me the granite countertops I wanted, but they

00:32:24 ◼   ► They cost 10 times more than I thought they would.

00:32:27 ◼   ► Because underneath them are two graphics cards, two GPUs that I'm not going to use most of.

00:32:31 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:32:32 ◼   ► Again, as I said before, there are parts of the Mac Pro that appeal to me way more than

00:32:38 ◼   ► if I had gotten exactly the computer that I wanted with internal storage and everything.

00:32:41 ◼   ► I like that it's super small.

00:32:43 ◼   ► I like that there's only one fan.

00:32:44 ◼   ► I never dreamed of those things when I was thinking, "Oh, boy, Apple revises the Mac

00:32:48 ◼   ► Pros."

00:32:49 ◼   ► And it has to have internal storage and it has to have card slots.

00:32:53 ◼   ► could be smaller and nicer, and of course they'll get rid of the optical. That's what I was

00:32:56 ◼   ► envisioning. And they'll be like, "Hey, that's exactly the machine to you." Instead, they gave

00:32:59 ◼   ► me this other machine that has things that I didn't even dream I could ask for. Only one fan,

00:33:03 ◼   ► as quiet as a Mac Mini? You better bet that appeals to me tremendously. But it costs so

00:33:08 ◼   ► darn much money. It's getting into like, "Oh, if you can afford it, do you want a really fancy

00:33:13 ◼   ► computer just because you like a fancy computer?" Yes, but I have a budget too, and it costs so much

00:33:18 ◼   ► money. So that, for me specifically, is the problem. And me railing against all the people

00:33:24 ◼   ► saying, "What do you need that computer for?" or "What do you need a high-end GPU for?"

00:33:28 ◼   ► or anything like that, I'm just saying, you don't need to need it. You just need to want

00:33:32 ◼   ► it. And I certainly do want a Mac Pro, but you always have to balance what you want with

00:33:36 ◼   ► what you can afford, and so on and so forth. So I think these are two separate issues.

00:33:39 ◼   ► I think also, and with all due apologies to Casey to talk more about the Mac Pro just for

00:33:44 ◼   ► a minute. I swear it'll be fast. He's already left. He's lopped it. I think the new Mac

00:33:52 ◼   ► Pro, it's kind of like when the first MacBook Air came out, in that we're looking at it

00:33:58 ◼   ► now and we're saying there's no drive bays, there's no card slots, the RAM ceiling is

00:34:03 ◼   ► actually lower than the previous one. And so you look at all that and you say, "Well,

00:34:07 ◼   ► this isn't really what we wanted and it's kind of limited." Everyone said the same things

00:34:12 ◼   ► about the first MacBook Air when it came out, although it had the additional problem that

00:34:15 ◼   ► it was incredibly slow. The Mac Pro won't have that problem. Now, with the MacBook Air,

00:34:22 ◼   ► we have eventually, like, when it first came out, we were like, you know, I still use DVD

00:34:25 ◼   ► drives every so often, and maybe I want that port that it doesn't have or whatever, but

00:34:31 ◼   ► over like the next year and a half, those things basically vanished. And then two years

00:34:35 ◼   ► after the first one came out, the next one came out, it was awesome and everybody bought

00:34:38 ◼   ► it and it became like the new Mac to have. And I think that the current Mac, or the new

00:34:43 ◼   ► Mac Pro, which is humorously called the 2013 one, even though nobody actually got it in

00:34:49 ◼   ► 2013, the new Mac Pro is a similar kind of jump as the first MacBook Air, which is, although

00:34:55 ◼   ► with a lot fewer downsides I think, you know, my current Mac Pro, the big choose-grader

00:35:01 ◼   ► one, it has four internal drive bays that you can put hard drives in, you can put two

00:35:06 ◼   ► two optical drives in it, well, I even use both optical drives. I put a Blu-ray

00:35:10 ◼   ► burner in the bottom one. I use it approximately never. I have four internal

00:35:16 ◼   ► drive bays, one of them is full. And like I, over time I'm finding like, oh and the

00:35:24 ◼   ► card slots? I've never put an expansion card on a Mac Pro. I've owned two for

00:35:29 ◼   ► myself, one for my wife, never put an expansion card in it. And what a lot of

00:35:34 ◼   ► put in the expansion slots are more GPUs. And so the new one addresses that even.

00:35:38 ◼   ► So there's a lot of Mac Pro users who even

00:35:42 ◼   ► having the expandability of the previous generations didn't use it that much.

00:35:46 ◼   ► Oh, actually Sam the Geek just corrected me. Apparently my SSD is

00:35:50 ◼   ► a PCI express card that I forgot about. Oops. So once I have used

00:35:54 ◼   ► one card that, by the way, the new Mac Pro has that exact same thing, a 1 terabyte

00:35:58 ◼   ► SSD built in and it's faster and cheaper. So

00:36:02 ◼   ► The point is, I've had all this expandability, but over time, I've used less and less and less of it.

00:36:09 ◼   ► And I think Apple, looking at their customers, I believe they've found similar things among other Mac Pro buyers.

00:36:14 ◼   ► Saying things like, "Yeah, it's true that a lot of video editors don't use local storage. They'll use a SAN or something like that."

00:36:21 ◼   ► The need for the internal bays has shrunk over time.

00:36:26 ◼   ► And so the compromises the new machine makes, the compromises that are about hardware,

00:36:31 ◼   ► There's compromises about pricing and requiring two GPUs that increases the pricing. That's a separate issue

00:36:38 ◼   ► that's perfectly valid, but the compromise is about

00:36:40 ◼   ► internal expendability and space and ports and things. I think they're actually doing the right thing.

00:36:47 ◼   ► I don't think that's gonna really be a problem that anyone cares about in six months.

00:36:50 ◼   ► Yeah, perhaps not.

00:36:53 ◼   ► Firstly, I have to apologize. I was trying to interject and say it was fine for you to continue talking about Mac Pro stuff,

00:36:58 ◼   ► but I left myself muted like a moron.

00:37:01 ◼   ► Well, because you didn't object, I just kept going.

00:37:04 ◼   ► Well, I noticed. And that's fine. No, it's not a problem.

00:37:06 ◼   ► But I would really, really love for you to tell me about something that's awesome.

00:37:09 ◼   ► I completely agree, because it's 40 minutes in.

00:37:12 ◼   ► That's alright. We'll just have a short show.

00:37:15 ◼   ► So, our first sponsor—I'm going to paste the link in the chat.

00:37:18 ◼   ► You guys can see. I'll put this in the show notes too.

00:37:20 ◼   ► Our first sponsor is Fracture.

00:37:22 ◼   ► Go to fractureme.com.

00:37:24 ◼   ► Fracture prints your photo in vivid color directly onto glass.

00:37:28 ◼   ► It's the thinnest, lightest, and most elegant way to display your favorite photo.

00:37:32 ◼   ► Now, Fracture sponsored my site forever ago,

00:37:36 ◼   ► and they gave me a free one, and I was very impressed with it.

00:37:40 ◼   ► I hung it on the wall, it's fantastic. And what I recently did,

00:37:44 ◼   ► I put the link here in the show notes and the chat room, I recently realized

00:37:48 ◼   ► that they have this little one. It's a 5x5 square,

00:37:52 ◼   ► And it's just 12 bucks.

00:37:54 ◼   ► And they have all sorts of sizes above that for good prices.

00:37:57 ◼   ► But this little one is 5 by 5, 12 bucks.

00:38:00 ◼   ► And I realized, you know, I've always wanted to have a little row of the icons of the apps

00:38:05 ◼   ► I've made on my wall somehow.

00:38:07 ◼   ► Because we work in this business of virtual everything.

00:38:11 ◼   ► There's no trophies or physical evidence of actual, like, here's something I accomplished

00:38:18 ◼   ► in the past or present.

00:38:19 ◼   ► But you didn't even make the icons.

00:38:21 ◼   ► You should have put the source code up there.

00:38:25 ◼   ► That's true.

00:38:25 ◼   ► Well, I chose the icons.

00:38:29 ◼   ► They were made slightly under my direction.

00:38:33 ◼   ► Thanks.

00:38:35 ◼   ► So I did this.

00:38:36 ◼   ► And it's a really great use for this thing.

00:38:38 ◼   ► You can use the small size if you want,

00:38:40 ◼   ► like for Instagram pictures, because it's square,

00:38:42 ◼   ► and it's small, and it's really inexpensive.

00:38:44 ◼   ► But I think this is really cool to just make

00:38:46 ◼   ► the icons of the apps that you've worked on,

00:38:48 ◼   ► hang those up.

00:38:48 ◼   ► They're 12 bucks each, that's nothing.

00:38:51 ◼   ► So what's cool about this, they mention in their copy

00:38:54 ◼   ► it's the thinnest, lightest, and most elegant.

00:38:56 ◼   ► What's nice about these fracture prints,

00:38:58 ◼   ► it's printed on glass, and it's a nice thin piece of glass

00:39:01 ◼   ► with the photo on it that wraps around the corners,

00:39:03 ◼   ► but then on the backing is a nice sturdy piece

00:39:06 ◼   ► of foam board kind of thing.

00:39:08 ◼   ► So it's not as heavy as you would expect

00:39:09 ◼   ► this giant print of glass to be.

00:39:11 ◼   ► So you don't have to worry about it

00:39:13 ◼   ► ripping out of your wall or falling off

00:39:14 ◼   ► and crashing down and exploding.

00:39:16 ◼   ► I'm always a little nervous to hang

00:39:18 ◼   ► giant heavy things. These don't have that problem. They're nice and lightweight, but

00:39:21 ◼   ► it's still this perfect flat piece of glass on top. It's packaged extremely well. I've

00:39:26 ◼   ► never heard of any of them breaking for anybody. The packaging is awesome. It's even instructional

00:39:31 ◼   ► how to open it, where to open it. And they include in the box everything you need to

00:39:34 ◼   ► hang it up. They include like a little wall anchor, if you get the wall kit or if you

00:39:39 ◼   ► got the desk kit, they have like the little prop up thing. You don't need a frame for

00:39:42 ◼   ► these because it's really nice and also a big money saver right there because they are

00:39:46 ◼   ► so nice you can just hand them directly on the wall. They are their own frame. You don't

00:39:49 ◼   ► need to buy a different one. Really great. Every fracture is handmade and checked for

00:39:53 ◼   ► quality by their small team in Gainesville, Florida. So go to fractureme.com to learn

00:39:58 ◼   ► more and try them out. At checkout, you can use our coupon code ATP to get 20% off. That's

00:40:04 ◼   ► a big number. Twenty percent off with coupon code ATP at fractureme.com. That'll also let

00:40:10 ◼   ► them know that you came from here, which will help support us. So thanks a lot to Fracture

00:40:13 ◼   ► for sponsoring our show.

00:40:15 ◼   ► Yep, thank you, Fracture.

00:40:17 ◼   ► Now, did you—this is not a loaded question—did you have anything more on the Mac Pro, because

00:40:21 ◼   ► I sort of kind of cut you off there?

00:40:23 ◼   ► Me?

00:40:24 ◼   ► I actually—I think for now I'm done.

00:40:26 ◼   ► I mean, I'm sure by next episode I'll come up with more, maybe even in ten minutes.

00:40:30 ◼   ► But I think for now I'm done.

00:40:32 ◼   ► All right, John, anything about the Mac Pro specifically?

00:40:35 ◼   ► No.

00:40:36 ◼   ► Okay.

00:40:37 ◼   ► Tell me about Panasonic LCD TVs, if you don't mind.

00:40:40 ◼   ► Oh, and we're back to CES.

00:40:41 ◼   ► This is worse than the Mac Pro.

00:40:44 ◼   ► I threw this in there because this is a story that I saw in the CES news, and I was interested

00:40:50 ◼   ► with TV tech and particularly what Panasonic was going to do.

00:40:53 ◼   ► We all knew that Panasonic was leaving the Plasma business, and of course they were going

00:40:57 ◼   ► to make LCD TVs, and they have.

00:41:00 ◼   ► And the most interesting thing about this, I think, is, well, I mean, of course they're

00:41:05 ◼   ► touting 4K.

00:41:06 ◼   ► Everyone's touting 4K.

00:41:07 ◼   ► Last year, they were doing, everyone was touting 4K as well.

00:41:10 ◼   ► But it was interesting to me to see how they're going to pitch these new televisions.

00:41:15 ◼   ► And the way they pitched it, they kind of did a little bit of marketing judo.

00:41:20 ◼   ► On the one hand, you could say, well, they went right up and they hit right to their

00:41:25 ◼   ► opponent's forehand.

00:41:27 ◼   ► They knew that everyone was going to say, these TVs aren't as good as your old TVs.

00:41:32 ◼   ► So they addressed that immediately.

00:41:33 ◼   ► Their marketing message was, we're making 4K LED televisions, LCD with an LED backlight.

00:41:39 ◼   ► That sucks crap.

00:41:40 ◼   ► that so much? I know. It's a convenient shorthand, but anyway. And what we're going to say about

00:41:45 ◼   ► them is they're as good as or better than our plasma TVs. But they said it in a kind

00:41:50 ◼   ► of marketing weasel-worthy way. They were showing a color chart saying the color reproduction

00:41:58 ◼   ► is better than even our best previous plasma, the ZT60. The thing about that is that color

00:42:05 ◼   ► Color reproduction for televisions, for plasmids and everything, plasmids that Panasonic has

00:42:10 ◼   ► been selling for years can already show colors outside the range that you're "supposed" to

00:42:16 ◼   ► show when reproducing Blu-rays and television signals.

00:42:20 ◼   ► The color range in the content is not as wide as can be displayed by TVs.

00:42:25 ◼   ► In fact, most TVs have a setting that lets you say, "Do you want me to show the colors

00:42:28 ◼   ► as intended by the author according to this narrow range of colors that they expected

00:42:32 ◼   ► to be able to reproduce on output? Or do you want me to use the entire color range of the

00:42:36 ◼   ► set and just kind of smear the source colors across that? And you could choose whichever

00:42:41 ◼   ► you want. You want accuracy or sort of like a wider color band. So the fact that there

00:42:44 ◼   ► are LCD television has an ever so slightly even wider range of colors than the plasmas

00:42:51 ◼   ► doesn't really make that much of a difference with current content. Maybe it'll make a difference

00:42:54 ◼   ► down the line with different content, but for now it doesn't really make that much.

00:42:58 ◼   ► And they didn't, as far as I know, say anything about black levels and motion interpolation

00:43:02 ◼   ► and all the other areas where we know LCDs have problems compared to plasmas.

00:43:05 ◼   ► So I'm kind of disappointed that they pulled that, but it seems to have worked on everyone

00:43:11 ◼   ► because everyone just keeps parroting the line and says, "Oh, Panasonic says they're

00:43:13 ◼   ► as good as or better than their previous plasmas."

00:43:16 ◼   ► In some respects, I'm sure they are as good.

00:43:18 ◼   ► In some respects, they're probably better.

00:43:19 ◼   ► They probably use way less power, they're thinner, so on and so forth.

00:43:22 ◼   ► But in some respects, I fully expect that they are worse.

00:43:25 ◼   ► I guess the jury's still out until independent third parties get their hands on these TVs

00:43:29 ◼   ► and start testing them, and we'll see.

00:43:31 ◼   ► But this is not the first time this has happened.

00:43:34 ◼   ► Way back in the day, Pioneer used to make plasmas, and they made a line of plasmas that

00:43:38 ◼   ► was widely acknowledged to be the best TV you could buy for any price.

00:43:41 ◼   ► There wasn't a projection TV, and it was the Pioneer Kuro Elite line of televisions, and

00:43:47 ◼   ► then Pioneer stopped making plasmas.

00:43:49 ◼   ► And for many, many years after that, every new television from any manufacturer that

00:43:53 ◼   ► was reviewed, they would say, "Oh, this is a great new TV.

00:43:56 ◼   ► It's the best one you can buy right now, but it's still not as good as the Kuro Elite."

00:43:59 ◼   ► And that would happen year after year, and that's kind of very strange in technology,

00:44:02 ◼   ► where it would be like if the new Mac Pro came out and they said, "Well, this Mac Pro

00:44:07 ◼   ► is great, but it's not as good as the Mac Pro that was out four years ago."

00:44:09 ◼   ► That never happens.

00:44:10 ◼   ► Like, it's...

00:44:11 ◼   ► That doesn't happen in computers, and happening in television is also very strange.

00:44:14 ◼   ► So for a long, long time, the Kuro Elite was the king, and it could be for a long time

00:44:18 ◼   ► that the Panasonic Plasmids would be the king.

00:44:21 ◼   ► But I suspect that the 4K difference will be a factor here.

00:44:25 ◼   ► And it's like, well, you know, all those plasmas weren't 4K, so who cares about them?

00:44:29 ◼   ► And all that matters is 4K.

00:44:31 ◼   ► So serious question.

00:44:32 ◼   ► Do you suspect that you will—I'm going to use the word "regret," but I think

00:44:37 ◼   ► that's too strong—that you'll regret the purchase of your TV from just a month

00:44:40 ◼   ► or so ago sooner because some newer, better TV will come out or because there will be

00:44:50 ◼   ► proliferation of 4K TV shows and movies, thus actually making a 4K display worth it.

00:44:57 ◼   ► Yeah, how do you, not to avoid that question because I think I'll get to it eventually,

00:45:02 ◼   ► but how do you guys feel about 4K?

00:45:04 ◼   ► Well, it's one of those things. It's a lot like Super Audio CD and DVD audio, which

00:45:10 ◼   ► is, you know, and I don't mean to predict its sales, although I think, well, screw it,

00:45:16 ◼   ► I do. I don't need to be diplomatic here.

00:45:21 ◼   ► When you look at various consumer electronics AV formats over time, the audio world is a

00:45:27 ◼   ► great way to look at this, although it applies to video as well. Every time there's been

00:45:32 ◼   ► a major quality increase that has been successful in the market, it has also come with other

00:45:37 ◼   ► benefits besides the quality that have made people want to buy it. So when going from

00:45:43 ◼   ► to CDs, there was a major increase in so many other factors besides the audio quality. It

00:45:48 ◼   ► was more convenient, it was more reliable, it was faster to seek around and no rewinding.

00:45:54 ◼   ► Similar thing going from VHS to DVD. Everything is faster, easier, better, more versatile,

00:46:00 ◼   ► you can put it in more places, computers can read it, you can play it in the car, all that

00:46:03 ◼   ► stuff. And so then you look at then going from DVD to Blu-ray. And DVD to Blu-ray was

00:46:11 ◼   ► much slower transition. I would still say it's not really complete.

00:46:15 ◼   ► Because the only difference between DVD and Blu-ray

00:46:20 ◼   ► is Blu-ray is better quality and is more annoying in all the ways the DVDs are

00:46:25 ◼   ► annoying, Blu-rays are worse.

00:46:27 ◼   ► That's the only major difference. There's no like,

00:46:30 ◼   ► they aren't all of a sudden more versatile or easier to use

00:46:33 ◼   ► or available in more places or cheaper or smaller or anything like that.

00:46:37 ◼   ► So looking at all that, look at TVs.

00:46:40 ◼   ► When we moved from SD to HD, we also were moving from CRTs, the giant, heavy, horrible

00:46:50 ◼   ► things to nice, thin LCDs and plasmas that were much bigger, much thinner, much lighter,

00:46:57 ◼   ► much cooler looking, and much better looking.

00:46:59 ◼   ► So there were a lot of other reasons for people to move from SD to HD.

00:47:04 ◼   ► Also the wide screen aspect ratio was another big factor.

00:47:07 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:47:08 ◼   ► all these other factors that went along with it that made it a success in the market and

00:47:13 ◼   ► that made people want to have it besides just picture quality. In fact, as most people know,

00:47:20 ◼   ► almost everyone who cares about TV picture quality has probably gone to a relative's

00:47:24 ◼   ► or parent's house and seen that they are running their cable box or something into the TV that

00:47:29 ◼   ► supports high def, but they have it hooked up with the wrong cables, using the wrong

00:47:31 ◼   ► input or the wrong settings, and they are not even watching HD content, and they don't

00:47:35 ◼   ► care and it drives you nuts. So obviously the picture quality alone is not enough to

00:47:41 ◼   ► drive major adoption very quickly of anything.

00:47:45 ◼   ► Same thing, so in the audio world when SACD and DVD audio came out they both flopped,

00:47:51 ◼   ► first of all because of the format war, but mostly because nobody cared that much. It

00:47:54 ◼   ► was the exact same as CDs, but less things were supported. You had to get new players,

00:47:59 ◼   ► you couldn't do it in your computer or your car or anything, so it flopped.

00:48:03 ◼   ► 4K is, you know, at least you have backwards compatibility with newer types of TV sets,

00:48:08 ◼   ► that's less of a problem, but you look at 4K and it's like, well, we already have HD,

00:48:14 ◼   ► 1080p. It's very mature by now. We have great, we have tons of great HD source material and

00:48:21 ◼   ► source devices, tons of HD broadcast cable, like everything is HD now basically, which

00:48:26 ◼   ► was not the case even like five years ago. You have very good HD support in the industry.

00:48:32 ◼   ► And the move to 4K, what is that really going to bring us?

00:48:37 ◼   ► It's going to bring a new type of disk format, probably.

00:48:41 ◼   ► I don't think Blu-ray can do it, right?

00:48:42 ◼   ► So probably a new kind of disk format, new kinds of TVs, new disk players if we're still

00:48:46 ◼   ► using disks.

00:48:47 ◼   ► God, I hope we're not, but we probably still will for a little while.

00:48:51 ◼   ► Much larger file sizes for internet streamed media.

00:48:56 ◼   ► A whole other round of everybody, cable companies, TV companies, everybody being able to screw

00:49:01 ◼   ► everything up again. So it's like this big disruption. It's going to make everything

00:49:05 ◼   ► that was mature, it's going to become immature again. You know, like, why go through all

00:49:10 ◼   ► that? And the reason is an increase in picture quality that you probably won't notice ever,

00:49:16 ◼   ► but the people who do notice it will only notice it on like an 80-inch TV. I mean, that's

00:49:21 ◼   ► how compelling is that really? And I think it's going to take off similarly to Blu-ray

00:49:26 ◼   ► in that it will be the high end, so people will buy it, but it's not going to be explosively

00:49:32 ◼   ► growing very quickly the way DVDs and CDs did, because to most people it doesn't bring

00:49:38 ◼   ► any noticeable benefit except saying you have the high end thing.

00:49:42 ◼   ► Now, the audio CDs and the Blu-ray and stuff had two things going against them that 4K

00:49:50 ◼   ► at least doesn't have, and both of those were physical media being introduced right

00:49:55 ◼   ► around the time when physical media was going away for their respective mediums, like DVD

00:49:59 ◼   ► audio and Super Audio CD.

00:50:00 ◼   ► Yes, the old things said the format war was stupid and nobody cared, but also MP3s came

00:50:06 ◼   ► along.

00:50:07 ◼   ► And so they were just wiped out.

00:50:08 ◼   ► And Blu-ray, it's amazing that it has been as successful as it has been, but it came

00:50:12 ◼   ► out around the time that streaming video became a thing.

00:50:15 ◼   ► And now only crazy people buy Blu-rays and everyone else just streams it if they can.

00:50:19 ◼   ► So those were all media distribution formats that were coming up against a "Hey, we don't

00:50:23 ◼   ► need physical media anymore.

00:50:25 ◼   ► Television is luckily have the advantage of there's no downloadable TV.

00:50:28 ◼   ► You need to have an actual TV set.

00:50:30 ◼   ► You can't make a TV set appear in your house over a wire.

00:50:33 ◼   ► So that still at least has a place in the ecosystem.

00:50:36 ◼   ► It's not being wiped out by like, I mean I guess the equivalent would be like head-mounted

00:50:40 ◼   ► displays or something or something else that's not wiping it out.

00:50:42 ◼   ► People still want to look at a screen.

00:50:44 ◼   ► So they have that going for them.

00:50:46 ◼   ► The 4K thing, sometimes I think it's kind of like retina where it's like, yeah, nobody

00:50:50 ◼   ► will care and only nerds will be able to tell, but it'll happen anyway just because it's

00:50:55 ◼   ► cheap enough to double the resolution of LCDs at that size. That could happen. I can totally

00:51:01 ◼   ► envision a world where every TV you buy is 4K and almost all content is still 1080p,

00:51:06 ◼   ► because the content and everything else didn't catch up with it. But mostly what I think about

00:51:11 ◼   ► 4K is that kind of like SuperE audio CD and DVD audio, they enhance the wrong thing. They enhance

00:51:19 ◼   ► That's the thing that the fewest number of people are able to detect as even being different,

00:51:25 ◼   ► let alone better.

00:51:26 ◼   ► Because if you play an audio CD for someone and play a DVD audio or a Super Audio CD,

00:51:30 ◼   ► no, people can't tell.

00:51:31 ◼   ► Even audio files can probably be fooled.

00:51:32 ◼   ► It depends on the mastering, it depends on everything else, and all those excuses you're

00:51:35 ◼   ► going to make for not being able to tell between a CD and Super Audio CD, all those same excuses

00:51:39 ◼   ► apply to television.

00:51:40 ◼   ► "Well, it depends on how the content is mastered.

00:51:42 ◼   ► Well, it depends on how it's distributed.

00:51:43 ◼   ► Well, it depends on the authorship."

00:51:44 ◼   ► Yes, that's true of video as well.

00:51:46 ◼   ► And that's why I think doubling the resolution

00:51:50 ◼   ► may not be better in enough ways that people can tell.

00:51:52 ◼   ► Now, 4K has a couple saving graces.

00:51:54 ◼   ► Everyone concentrates on the resolution,

00:51:56 ◼   ► but that also has support for different frame rates.

00:51:59 ◼   ► And that I think people probably could notice

00:52:01 ◼   ► if based on people's impression of seeing The Hobbit

00:52:03 ◼   ► in 48 frames per second and how they said it looked crazy.

00:52:05 ◼   ► At least people noticed, at least people could tell,

00:52:07 ◼   ► hey, this is 48 frames per second

00:52:08 ◼   ► and I could tell it's different.

00:52:10 ◼   ► Or as someone in the chat room points out,

00:52:12 ◼   ► sports at 120 frames per second.

00:52:15 ◼   ► Those are things that maybe people will be able to tell,

00:52:18 ◼   ► and that may be able to drag along the content producers

00:52:20 ◼   ► to say, who's motivated to make 4K content?

00:52:23 ◼   ► Well, maybe the NFL isn't motivated to make 4K content.

00:52:26 ◼   ► And if the NFL is motivated to make 4K content

00:52:28 ◼   ► and people will buy the TVs,

00:52:30 ◼   ► and that will kind of go along together,

00:52:31 ◼   ► and it may just be kind of an inevitable thing.

00:52:33 ◼   ► But the other people making noise at CES this year

00:52:36 ◼   ► were trying to say, hey, we're over here,

00:52:39 ◼   ► and we're trying to improve the other stuff

00:52:41 ◼   ► that needs to be improved about TV,

00:52:42 ◼   ► like I just mentioned, the color gamut.

00:52:43 ◼   ► Like what is the maximum dynamic range

00:52:46 ◼   ► between the brightest and the darkest spot

00:52:47 ◼   ► on a television set?

00:52:48 ◼   ► What are the range of colors that you can display?

00:52:51 ◼   ► All those things are areas that desperately need

00:52:54 ◼   ► to be improved in television,

00:52:56 ◼   ► but you know, the television color standards,

00:52:57 ◼   ► even the HD standards are way behind

00:52:59 ◼   ► what the current technology can display.

00:53:01 ◼   ► And those people will notice way more than 4K.

00:53:03 ◼   ► If you showed someone that Dolby demo

00:53:05 ◼   ► with like the huge dynamic range and everything,

00:53:09 ◼   ► and then showed somebody 4K TV,

00:53:11 ◼   ► everyone will be able to tell Dolby thing is different,

00:53:13 ◼   ► even if it was running at 1080p.

00:53:15 ◼   ► And if you just show 4K versus non-4K

00:53:17 ◼   ► from a certain distance, you can't tell anymore.

00:53:19 ◼   ► Because if resolution is the only thing,

00:53:22 ◼   ► that's not gonna save you.

00:53:23 ◼   ► So I think this is interesting, but I really wish,

00:53:26 ◼   ► kinda like the cameras with the megapixel wars,

00:53:30 ◼   ► I really wish that the side that was going for

00:53:33 ◼   ► not more pixels but better pixels basically

00:53:35 ◼   ► was a little bit stronger in this fight.

00:53:37 ◼   ► But it seems to me that 4K will probably happen

00:53:41 ◼   ► kind of inevitably, but not nearly in enough time

00:53:44 ◼   ► for me to regret my Plasma purchase

00:53:45 ◼   ► to finally answer Casey's question,

00:53:47 ◼   ► because I'm gonna be enjoying 1080p content

00:53:51 ◼   ► with fewer of the compromises that bother me about LCDs

00:53:55 ◼   ► for many years to come.

00:53:57 ◼   ► The only thing that could possibly annoy me, I think,

00:53:59 ◼   ► is that if game consoles start putting out 4K

00:54:02 ◼   ► and it's noticeable for like frame rate reasons,

00:54:05 ◼   ► if that happens, maybe I'll regret it in a couple years,

00:54:07 ◼   ► but I really, I would feel much, much worse

00:54:10 ◼   ► if I had my old TV, which was not nearly as good a quality

00:54:13 ◼   ► as any plasma in the past couple of years,

00:54:16 ◼   ► I would have really regretted keeping that

00:54:18 ◼   ► and knowing now I'm stuck.

00:54:20 ◼   ► Now if this TV breaks or if I just get sick

00:54:22 ◼   ► of looking at bad black levels,

00:54:24 ◼   ► I will never, there's nothing out there for me to buy.

00:54:26 ◼   ► I just have to sit here and wait.

00:54:27 ◼   ► Now at least I know I'm set as long as this thing

00:54:29 ◼   ► keeps working for many, many years

00:54:31 ◼   ► and I can sort of do what I like to do,

00:54:32 ◼   ► which is bide my time and look for that one perfect time

00:54:34 ◼   ► to buy the cool new thing.

00:54:36 ◼   ► - That's fair.

00:54:38 ◼   ► Yeah, and I think you have a long time before any 4K TV is so good and so compelling and

00:54:45 ◼   ► so supported by the surrounding ecosystem that it would be really compelling for you

00:54:50 ◼   ► to upgrade.

00:54:51 ◼   ► I mean, HDTV came out when?

00:54:54 ◼   ► Like 2001 or something?

00:54:56 ◼   ► It's pretty old.

00:54:58 ◼   ► But most people didn't get them that year.

00:55:01 ◼   ► They got them like five years later or more.

00:55:04 ◼   ► And it was a few years after that before they were actually very good.

00:55:09 ◼   ► And I think we're going to see a lot of the same things.

00:55:10 ◼   ► I mean, granted, that was also, again, that was changing over a lot of legacy old stuff,

00:55:15 ◼   ► making LCDs get better, making plasmas get better, modernizing lots of the signals, digitizing

00:55:19 ◼   ► lots of stuff.

00:55:20 ◼   ► So there was more to do during that transition.

00:55:23 ◼   ► The HD content is terrible, though.

00:55:25 ◼   ► Like the compression artifacts on your cable provider or Netflix streaming, they can't

00:55:29 ◼   ► even put a signal that doesn't look like crap on 1080 sometimes.

00:55:33 ◼   ► and 1080i they're sending it as,

00:55:35 ◼   ► they're not even sending full 1080p.

00:55:36 ◼   ► So it's gonna be a long time for the,

00:55:38 ◼   ► you know, sort of non, if you don't have a good reason,

00:55:40 ◼   ► if you're not like the Discovery Channel,

00:55:42 ◼   ► the NFL or something, you have some compelling reason

00:55:44 ◼   ► to go to 4K high frame rate as soon as you possibly can,

00:55:48 ◼   ► we're still in for a long, long road of supposedly 4K

00:55:52 ◼   ► content, supposedly HD content that technically

00:55:54 ◼   ► fulfills the requirements, but mostly is gross.

00:55:57 ◼   ► - Well, a couple things to consider.

00:55:59 ◼   ► Firstly, the NFL already films in 4K,

00:56:01 ◼   ► at least I think it was Fox does. Somebody, it may have been Engadget, I don't recall

00:56:06 ◼   ► who it was, but they had talked to, and I believe it was Fox, about how they were going

00:56:11 ◼   ► to film a Patriots game. And one of the things they said was, "We actually film in 4K so

00:56:19 ◼   ► that when you zoom," and Slade 401 in the chat is saying it was the Verge, whatever

00:56:24 ◼   ► So when you zoom on a instant replay

00:56:27 ◼   ► You'll get a full 1080 image out of the source, which was 4k and so

00:56:33 ◼   ► To some degree this is already happening even though it's not making it all the way to the consumer

00:56:39 ◼   ► And the other thing I wanted to point out was part of the reason that Aaron and I didn't upgrade to an HD

00:56:46 ◼   ► Setup initially was because not only did we need a new TV

00:56:51 ◼   ► But we also needed a different cable box and to get the different cable box

00:56:57 ◼   ► We needed to pay at the time Comcast more money, and I can't speak for everyone else, but I know

00:57:02 ◼   ► Similar to the the retina discussion we had last week. I didn't really at the time know what I was missing and

00:57:10 ◼   ► So I didn't really see an urgent need to upgrade and Aaron doesn't really care for

00:57:14 ◼   ► 99% of all TV and so she didn't see a terribly strong reason to upgrade and so we didn't have we had

00:57:21 ◼   ► We had an HDTV in 2007, and I don't think we actually had HD pumping into the house

00:57:28 ◼   ► until we moved a year later and we're getting Fios anyway.

00:57:31 ◼   ► So I can't speak for everyone, but that makes it a little different.

00:57:36 ◼   ► Another thing it made me think of was, I wonder if adoption of LTE bands would have been a

00:57:43 ◼   ► lot slower if it cost more money from the carriers to get LTE service.

00:57:50 ◼   ► and I can only speak for AT&T, but on AT&T there's no difference in price. And I believe

00:57:55 ◼   ► that's the same for Verizon. I am not sure that's the same for T-Mobile. And nobody

00:57:59 ◼   ► uses Sprint. So I'm not saying there's an answer and it's a rhetorical question,

00:58:04 ◼   ► but I wonder if LTE adoption would have been slower if it was more expensive.

00:58:08 ◼   ► Right. I think, you know, the way most people go to new technologies is when they have to

00:58:13 ◼   ► buy a new one anyway, they get a decent one at the time. And so with phones, we move very

00:58:19 ◼   ► quickly because so many people are on subsidized phone plans where you're pretty much encouraged

00:58:24 ◼   ► to get a new phone every one to three years. So that's why the phone market moves so quickly.

00:58:30 ◼   ► TVs move very slowly. You said like the cable box thing. A lot of people don't have to pay

00:58:35 ◼   ► for their cable box, but you might have to go through a hassle for an upgrade, like bringing

00:58:40 ◼   ► it to some place in the middle of nowhere next to the UPS depot or whatever. I've cut

00:58:44 ◼   ► I've cut it down so many times.

00:58:47 ◼   ► But even if you do have to pay for it, yeah, you're right.

00:58:49 ◼   ► Usually there's a premium.

00:58:50 ◼   ► If you have, well, if TiVo is still alive and you have a TiVo, then you've got to pay

00:58:54 ◼   ► extra for the new HD or 4K one, and then Jon's going to complain about that for the next

00:58:58 ◼   ► ten years because it's going to suck.

00:59:00 ◼   ► You think that will have HD menus everywhere?

00:59:02 ◼   ► No one will be complaining, "These menus are only 1080p!"

00:59:05 ◼   ► Exactly.

00:59:06 ◼   ► I would be glad if we ever get to that point.

00:59:08 ◼   ► It seems like that may never even happen.

00:59:11 ◼   ► Yeah.

00:59:12 ◼   ► you know, the rate at which people normally upgrade TV equipment is pretty slow, because

00:59:17 ◼   ► TVs are large and they at least used to be pretty expensive, but they're getting pretty

00:59:21 ◼   ► cheap now, but there's still these large kind of fixtures, like furniture pieces, that you

00:59:26 ◼   ► tend...like, no one gets a new TV every year except Jon.

00:59:29 ◼   ► I've waited four years. Give me a break. Four years I've waited. The TiVo menus, by the

00:59:35 ◼   ► way, they're not even 1080p now, they're 720p. Not that that makes a big difference, but,

00:59:39 ◼   ► you know.

00:59:40 ◼   ► And by the way, lots of TVs are still sold at 720p.

00:59:43 ◼   ► I don't think that... do they still make 720p?

00:59:46 ◼   ► I think every TV is 1080p now.

00:59:48 ◼   ► No!

00:59:49 ◼   ► Last year when I bought that LCD, that small 37-inch LCD for the back room, I had to look

00:59:55 ◼   ► pretty hard to get a 1080p one.

00:59:57 ◼   ► So many of them were 720p.

00:59:58 ◼   ► I think you need to re-research that.

01:00:01 ◼   ► I think they're almost all.

01:00:03 ◼   ► I'm sure you can still find a 720p somewhere, especially if you start going to the no-name

01:00:07 ◼   ► brands, but I think any name brand probably has zero 720p television sets.

01:00:12 ◼   ► No, I don't think that's the case. I don't think that's the case.

01:00:14 ◼   ► You are wrong. Once you go to the smaller sizes, like in the 30s—

01:00:18 ◼   ► Exactly.

01:00:18 ◼   ► You go to the 30s and you go to those LCDs in the 30s and there's a lot of 720p.

01:00:23 ◼   ► Who's buying a 30-inch TV that's the size of your monitor?

01:00:26 ◼   ► Well, actually, I had to fit this into one area within an existing built-in bookshelf.

01:00:34 ◼   ► And so I had a size cap.

01:00:35 ◼   ► So this 37-inch Panasonic was like the biggest that would fit into this little spot.

01:00:39 ◼   ► Well, is this a Batcave?

01:00:41 ◼   ► You can say.

01:00:42 ◼   ► It's all right.

01:00:43 ◼   ► I'm not allowed to say.

01:00:44 ◼   ► Wow.

01:00:45 ◼   ► No, it's true, though.

01:00:46 ◼   ► Like, I think I said on a previous show, our biggest TV in the house is 40 inches.

01:00:51 ◼   ► And there is no part of me that wants a bigger one.

01:00:55 ◼   ► And that one is 1080.

01:00:56 ◼   ► But the one we have in our bedroom, and the only reason it's in our bedroom is because

01:01:01 ◼   ► as we got the 40-incher to replace it.

01:01:04 ◼   ► That one's 32 inches.

01:01:05 ◼   ► And granted, it's a bit older, but it's 720 only.

01:01:08 ◼   ► And I have no desire to upgrade it to a 1080 TV.

01:01:11 ◼   ► Now, granted, I'm either very weird or very normal,

01:01:15 ◼   ► depending on how you look at it.

01:01:17 ◼   ► But as soon as you go to lower sizes,

01:01:19 ◼   ► I think Marco's dead on.

01:01:21 ◼   ► It's a little bit challenging to find a 1080 TV.

01:01:24 ◼   ► I don't look at small television.

01:01:28 ◼   ► I was disappointed that I couldn't find a plasma that

01:01:31 ◼   ► was small because the plasma is-- speaking of the sizes of the televisions, these Panasonic

01:01:35 ◼   ► LCDs, the new 4K televisions, the smallest size that comes in is now 58. You were surprised

01:01:41 ◼   ► that the smallest size my TV came in was 55. Now the smallest size is 58. Soon the smallest

01:01:45 ◼   ► size is going to be 100 inches.

01:01:48 ◼   ► And the problem is all these really nice ones, like the VT60, they only come in larger sizes,

01:01:54 ◼   ► and those keep going up. So when my TV-- I have a really nice TV for when I bought it.

01:01:59 ◼   ► When it dies, I'm going to have to either get a giant wall of TV, which I don't want

01:02:04 ◼   ► and which TIFF would kill me if I got, or get a crappy one.

01:02:09 ◼   ► I think they have to—well, part of it is it's more expensive to make something.

01:02:13 ◼   ► With the plasmas in particular, the reason you couldn't make a 4K plasma is because

01:02:17 ◼   ► then the little tiny pits where the little particles are emitted and hit against the

01:02:23 ◼   ► phosphorescent material would have to be super-duper small, and that's like a technical limitation.

01:02:27 ◼   ► They probably could have done it if they wanted to invest tons and tons more money, but they didn't so they didn't but yeah

01:02:31 ◼   ► As you get as the resolution goes up

01:02:33 ◼   ► It's actually cheaper to make that's why like the 28 inch Dell 4k monitor that people want us to talk about

01:02:38 ◼   ► It's actually cheaper to make a high resolution monitor bigger because then you don't have to make the pixel so darn small

01:02:43 ◼   ► And it's you know this fewer errors, and it's easier to manufacture and all that stuff

01:02:47 ◼   ► So I think I'm hoping that will take care of itself, but yeah when I'm shopping for a television

01:02:51 ◼   ► I'm always shopping at the high end and they're all big and they're all 1080

01:02:54 ◼   ► I guess wait as you get smaller

01:02:56 ◼   ► I mean in a certain point you get a certain size you you know it becomes like

01:03:00 ◼   ► You can't see you can't tell the difference between 720 and 1080 and as I'm surprised

01:03:05 ◼   ► No one has said in the chat room yet, or maybe I missed it

01:03:07 ◼   ► I think if you do the math 720p has more pixels per second than 1080i but

01:03:11 ◼   ► With all the processing that goes on who knows and yeah most most broadcast television is still 1080i not 1080p

01:03:18 ◼   ► Yeah, but getting back to what Casey said about the source material like NFL games filmed in 4k

01:03:24 ◼   ► I mean they do the same thing with the movies with the digital cameras like and you know

01:03:27 ◼   ► They've always done even for TV. They would record TV on video at a much higher quality

01:03:31 ◼   ► Than you'll ever be able to broadcast. That's you know, that's par for the course

01:03:35 ◼   ► Those are the people out there

01:03:36 ◼   ► Testing out the new format and everything by the time 4k makes its way down and there's some story on the evening use assuming

01:03:43 ◼   ► The evening news still exists that says oh the 4k transition is coming

01:03:47 ◼   ► Cable companies are turning off their old HD signal and now you can only get for it

01:03:51 ◼   ► Remember the whole transition from analog and all that stuff?

01:03:55 ◼   ► When we see that story in 10, 20 years, by that point, everyone will be recording everything

01:03:59 ◼   ► in like 8K or whatever the hell the next standard is.

01:04:01 ◼   ► So the content producers are always, you know, "I hope someone did the math and said 1080

01:04:05 ◼   ► AI has slightly more pixels per second than 720p."

01:04:09 ◼   ► I hope that in—somebody please tell me, and I hope this is the case—in the entire

01:04:13 ◼   ► 4K standard, is there any allowance anywhere for interlaced anything?

01:04:18 ◼   ► Because I hate interlacing so much in so many ways.

01:04:23 ◼   ► The artifacts it makes are horrible.

01:04:24 ◼   ► When you deinterlace, when you watch on something progressive, I hate getting interlaced DVDs

01:04:28 ◼   ► and then when I rip them they look bad and interlaced TV.

01:04:32 ◼   ► It's like, oh god, interlacing is the devil.

01:04:34 ◼   ► Sam the Geek in the chat says, "Nope, it is not in the spec."

01:04:37 ◼   ► I really hope that is true.

01:04:39 ◼   ► God, interlacing needs to die.

01:04:42 ◼   ► I hate interlacing so much.

01:04:43 ◼   ► But what I don't hate so much is our second sponsor for this week.

01:04:46 ◼   ► It is Ting.

01:04:47 ◼   ► Ting is a return sponsor.

01:04:49 ◼   ► Ting is mobile that makes sense.

01:04:51 ◼   ► They're a no BS, simple to use, mobile service provider

01:04:54 ◼   ► from the people at Two Cows, the company behind Hover.

01:04:58 ◼   ► Ting is a reseller of the Sprint network in the US.

01:05:00 ◼   ► So go to ATP.Ting.com to learn more.

01:05:04 ◼   ► They have great rates.

01:05:05 ◼   ► There's no contracts, no early termination fees.

01:05:08 ◼   ► You own your device outright from the start.

01:05:11 ◼   ► And what's great about Ting-- this is really interesting.

01:05:13 ◼   ► You've got to take a look at this.

01:05:15 ◼   ► true pay-for-what-you-use pricing model. So you pay this base price of six bucks per month

01:05:20 ◼   ► per device, and then above that you just pay for whatever actual amount of data or minutes

01:05:26 ◼   ► or megabytes or messages or whatever, you just pay for whatever you use, and it's bucketed

01:05:29 ◼   ► nicely. So like, if one month you use like 10 megs or nothing, you pay nothing or you

01:05:34 ◼   ► pay like a dollar or two, and then if the next month you use two gigs, you just pay

01:05:37 ◼   ► the bucket for that. It's really very, very nice. There's so many uses for this thing.

01:05:44 ◼   ► You can go to ATP.Ting.com, check out their savings calculator.

01:05:49 ◼   ► And this will tell you, you can input your current average minutes usage or average data

01:05:53 ◼   ► usage.

01:05:54 ◼   ► You can even, if you're a Verizon Wireless customer in the US, you can even give them

01:05:59 ◼   ► your credentials and they will log into Verizon and scrape your stats off of it and tell you,

01:06:03 ◼   ► here's what you used over the last X months and here's how much you would have saved if

01:06:07 ◼   ► you switched to Ting.

01:06:09 ◼   ► So really great.

01:06:10 ◼   ► They even had this deal where if you're stuck in a contract, you have to pay an early termination.

01:06:14 ◼   ► fee to get out of it, they will give you 25% of that fee back in service credit up to $75.

01:06:21 ◼   ► So like Hover, Ting has great customer support with a no-hold, no-wait phone number.

01:06:25 ◼   ► You just call them 8 a.m. to 8 p.m. Eastern and a human being picks up the phone immediately

01:06:31 ◼   ► who's there and ready to help you.

01:06:33 ◼   ► Anybody who's ever had to call AT&T or Verizon Wireless will think that's just voodoo magic.

01:06:38 ◼   ► It's impossible, but Ting made it possible.

01:06:41 ◼   ► So go to ATP.Ting.com, check out the great deals they have.

01:06:46 ◼   ► They have tethering included, no charge.

01:06:48 ◼   ► You can bring your own phone, you can buy a used phone,

01:06:50 ◼   ► you can buy a new phone.

01:06:51 ◼   ► So many more things that I have time

01:06:53 ◼   ► to tell you about right now.

01:06:54 ◼   ► If you even have a Sprint iPhone 4 or 4S,

01:06:57 ◼   ► you can bring that to Ting.

01:06:59 ◼   ► So check them out, ATP.Ting.com.

01:07:01 ◼   ► Thanks a lot for sponsoring the show.

01:07:04 ◼   ► So the helpful chat room has put in a link

01:07:06 ◼   ► to an article showing the color spaces,

01:07:07 ◼   ► showing the Rec. 709, which is the current HD color space.

01:07:11 ◼   ► and most TVs already go bigger than that.

01:07:14 ◼   ► And Panasonic was showing how this TV goes ever so slightly bigger.

01:07:17 ◼   ► But there's also Rec. 2020, which is part of the 4K UHD standard, which is way bigger,

01:07:23 ◼   ► has a much larger range.

01:07:24 ◼   ► It's not as big as the dynamic range of brightness that Dolby was showing off with their crazy

01:07:28 ◼   ► experimental water-cooled thing or whatever.

01:07:31 ◼   ► But it does show that-- this is what I was getting at before-- that 4K brings more than

01:07:34 ◼   ► just resolution.

01:07:35 ◼   ► It brings for Marco, progressive scan mode only.

01:07:39 ◼   ► And for me and a lot of other people, much higher frame rates.

01:07:42 ◼   ► Well, someone was mentioning rectangular pixels.

01:07:43 ◼   ► I have no idea if 4K still has rectangular pixels, or has rectangular pixels at all.

01:07:49 ◼   ► Maybe they're dead too.

01:07:50 ◼   ► Yeah, because my old HDTV that was a 4x3 CRT that you didn't think existed, which did exist,

01:07:57 ◼   ► that was possible because of all these weirdnesses in the HD spec to allow for all this old stuff.

01:08:02 ◼   ► But yeah, 4K is, at least I hope, it is taking its opportunity of dropping tons of legacy

01:08:08 ◼   ► crap like that and just going for now and future looking good technology that's relatively

01:08:14 ◼   ► simple.

01:08:15 ◼   ► And as for the 720p versus 1080i, again, it depends on the frame rate if you do 720p.

01:08:19 ◼   ► At 60 frames versus 1080i over 30, you can all do the math yourself, but as someone pointed

01:08:23 ◼   ► out in the chat room and now I can't scroll back to find where it is, but 720p—I want

01:08:28 ◼   ► to get it right so I don't want to—it was saying that 720p has more temporal resolution,

01:08:34 ◼   ► as in motion over time, because it's not interlaced, obviously, and 1080i has more

01:08:37 ◼   ► spatial resolution. So it depends on what you want. But that whole distinction with

01:08:42 ◼   ► the I and P and stuff will hopefully be a relic of history. I mean, this is kind of

01:08:47 ◼   ► one of the reasons in favor of 4K. You know, in 4K's corner is a lot of the legacy crap

01:08:53 ◼   ► left over from the bad old non-HD days still infects the HD standards. Yes, DudeX, I know

01:08:59 ◼   ► it was you in the chat room. I just couldn't find your line. I couldn't find it. I was

01:09:02 ◼   ► I was going to read it.

01:09:03 ◼   ► Anyway, making 4K, like what makes 4K inevitable is that it actually does get rid of a lot

01:09:12 ◼   ► of the annoying crap and a lot of the details that people then need to care about.

01:09:15 ◼   ► They didn't care about interlace versus progressive.

01:09:18 ◼   ► They don't care about all these details of color spaces and stuff, but if they can make

01:09:21 ◼   ► it so that it looks better to people and so that they have a reason to view it.

01:09:25 ◼   ► Like if you go over to your friend's house and you watch NFL and 4K at higher frame rate

01:09:29 ◼   ► you notice that's different, you're going to want that.

01:09:31 ◼   ► Because now there's content that you're interested in.

01:09:33 ◼   ► And if panel makers--

01:09:35 ◼   ► 4K just becomes, well, it's actually cheaper now

01:09:37 ◼   ► to make a 4K panel since all the factories are ramped up

01:09:41 ◼   ► on it or whatever.

01:09:42 ◼   ► It may be inevitable, but I still

01:09:43 ◼   ► think it'll take a long time before cable companies start

01:09:47 ◼   ► broadcasting 4K for anything except for a few special--

01:09:50 ◼   ► you know, content is still going to be

01:09:52 ◼   ► 1080 on all the cheap shows for a long, long, long time.

01:09:56 ◼   ► And even on the 4K channels, if the first person says,

01:09:59 ◼   ► every piece of our broadcast is 4K, some of those channels are going to look awful. Because

01:10:04 ◼   ► they're, like, some of the channels look awful today at 1080i because they're just super

01:10:07 ◼   ► over-compressed and gross.

01:10:08 ◼   ► So, do you have anything else to talk about?

01:10:11 ◼   ► I saw a lot of feedback fly through regarding Steam Boxes, and when Jon was lamenting having

01:10:20 ◼   ► to buy a PC just for games, I saw a few people say, "Well, why not get a Steam Box?" So,

01:10:27 ◼   ► Jon, why not?

01:10:28 ◼   ► Well first, so let's just assume that somebody, not me, but that a friend of mine has no clue

01:10:34 ◼   ► what a Steam Box is and hasn't been following this.

01:10:36 ◼   ► Could you maybe explain what it is first?

01:10:39 ◼   ► I could, but I'll do a terrible job of it because I don't really believe in games,

01:10:42 ◼   ► Jon.

01:10:43 ◼   ► They exist whether you believe in them or not.

01:10:47 ◼   ► By explaining Steam Box, it's hard to explain it without revealing my views on it, but anyway.

01:10:53 ◼   ► Valve is a company that started off making games and like many other good companies they

01:10:58 ◼   ► realized that there's more to the market they were in than just making games.

01:11:02 ◼   ► They also made a digital distribution platform which sounds like outside of their core competency,

01:11:07 ◼   ► "Hey, you just make great games.

01:11:08 ◼   ► What are you making a digital distribution platform for?"

01:11:10 ◼   ► Well, they were making it because that's the future of gaming and they saw it before everyone

01:11:13 ◼   ► else and they spent a long time working on their digital distribution thing called Steam,

01:11:18 ◼   ► which if you're not familiar with this type of thing, it's like the app store for games.

01:11:22 ◼   ► You don't have to go to a store and buy a disc.

01:11:23 ◼   ► You just log on to something and download it

01:11:25 ◼   ► and the game goes right onto your computer.

01:11:27 ◼   ► Steam is available for the Mac,

01:11:28 ◼   ► but even though it started out on the PC,

01:11:30 ◼   ► and it's a great way to buy games for all the same reasons

01:11:32 ◼   ► that the app stores are a great way for consumers

01:11:34 ◼   ► to buy apps because who wants to go to the store

01:11:36 ◼   ► and get a stupid disc?

01:11:38 ◼   ► So the Steam box is Valve's next step in this process,

01:11:42 ◼   ► which is, all right, why don't we make hardware as well?

01:11:45 ◼   ► Because not everyone has or wants to make a PC

01:11:48 ◼   ► that can play games.

01:11:50 ◼   ► we will, I guess they're setting some kind of standard or whatever and saying you want

01:11:53 ◼   ► to make a Steam Box.

01:11:54 ◼   ► It's basically like a little PC that comes preconfigured to connect to Steam and it comes

01:11:59 ◼   ► with a little controller if you want or you can use like an Xbox 360 controller or whatever.

01:12:03 ◼   ► And it's sort of a turnkey way for you to get a gaming PC to play games from Steam.

01:12:09 ◼   ► And people were suggesting a Steam Box to me.

01:12:11 ◼   ► I'm not quite sure whether they were suggesting it or they were just asking me what I thought

01:12:15 ◼   ► of it, but I think a lot of the coverage pinpoints the reasons to be skeptical about it, although

01:12:21 ◼   ► those reasons may not end up mattering in the end. The reasons I'm not all that interested in a Steam

01:12:27 ◼   ► Box is because, as many of the stories have said, it does less than a PC for a similar price. I mean,

01:12:33 ◼   ► it's just a PC. It's PC hardware, PC video cards, and a PC box. That's all it is, is just sort of

01:12:41 ◼   ► pre-configured and certified to work in this sort of thing. And they vary wildly. You can get super

01:12:45 ◼   ► cheap ones that are like a super cheap PC. You can get super expensive ones that are like a

01:12:48 ◼   ► super expensive PC. And I imagine, as many people pointed out, the most useful thing you can do with

01:12:53 ◼   ► this is just reboot it into Windows, because the Steam Box runs Linux, by the way, which helps keep

01:12:58 ◼   ► us close to that. Reboot it into Windows, and then you have a gaming PC. Why don't you just buy a

01:13:01 ◼   ► gaming PC? If you want a gaming PC, buy a gaming PC. Well, non-nerds don't want to buy a gaming PC

01:13:06 ◼   ► and don't know anything about them.

01:13:07 ◼   ► So this feature that people think is silly,

01:13:11 ◼   ► so what, it comes pre-configured to connect to Steam

01:13:13 ◼   ► and runs this free OS so you don't have to play

01:13:15 ◼   ► Windows license, who cares?

01:13:16 ◼   ► Like, I don't care about that,

01:13:17 ◼   ► I know how to install software, I know how to do this.

01:13:19 ◼   ► Like, just the mere fact that you can buy something,

01:13:22 ◼   ► call the Steam Box and have some sort of guarantees

01:13:24 ◼   ► about the experience, not guarantees,

01:13:26 ◼   ► like 'cause they do very wildly,

01:13:27 ◼   ► but if Valve can manage the expectations when you know,

01:13:32 ◼   ► I don't wanna get into PC gaming,

01:13:33 ◼   ► but my friend got a Steam Box

01:13:35 ◼   ► seems to be fewer problems, I'll get one of those. It's kind of like, I don't know anything

01:13:40 ◼   ► about digital music, but my friend got one of those iPod things and he's able to listen to music

01:13:44 ◼   ► digitally. So I'm going to try that. I'm not going to say Steambox has no chance.

01:13:51 ◼   ► They're trying to thread a pretty narrow, thread the needle here between the world of game consoles,

01:13:59 ◼   ► which is fixed hardware, doesn't change over time, easy to develop against because developers know

01:14:03 ◼   ► know what everybody has, plus or minus a couple of accessories, and on the other side of the

01:14:07 ◼   ► spectrum, full-fledged gaming PCs.

01:14:09 ◼   ► They're thinking there's something in the middle there where we can get you something

01:14:13 ◼   ► that's better than a console because you can spend more money and get a faster experience

01:14:18 ◼   ► and upgrade it over time in part or in whole and have access to all these games we have

01:14:23 ◼   ► available on Steam, but it's not as complicated as a gaming PC.

01:14:27 ◼   ► I'm not sure if that little narrow valley between those two things is going to work

01:14:31 ◼   ► for them, but it could very well be that the people who make gaming PCs will slowly become

01:14:37 ◼   ► smaller and smaller and smaller and sort of dwindle and die out, and it will turn out

01:14:41 ◼   ► that most of the people playing PC games actually weren't interested in building gaming PCs,

01:14:45 ◼   ► actually weren't interested in maintaining gaming PCs.

01:14:47 ◼   ► And this could really be a sort of a backdoor way to remake the PC industry, for people

01:14:52 ◼   ► who play games anyway, to be more like the iOS device industry, where people aren't interested

01:14:59 ◼   ► and tinkering them. They just want to get them, sit down in front of them, and use them.

01:15:03 ◼   ► So I'm not quite sure how this is going to turn out, but for me, as someone who, you

01:15:09 ◼   ► know, not that I'd be interested in tinkering to things, but I would be able to if I wanted

01:15:13 ◼   ► to. If I wanted to get a gaming PC, I would build a gaming PC. I don't want one, but if

01:15:17 ◼   ► I did, the things stopping me wouldn't be like, "Oh, I wish someone did all this work

01:15:21 ◼   ► for me." Because people do it, you can just go to Alienware and click a bunch of buttons

01:15:24 ◼   ► and get a super expensive gaming PC, and you could build a better one for half the money

01:15:28 ◼   ► if you wanted to, but if you don't want to,

01:15:30 ◼   ► you know, it's the same as anything else.

01:15:31 ◼   ► So we'll see.

01:15:32 ◼   ► I enjoy playing games from Steam on my Mac.

01:15:35 ◼   ► I enjoy playing them, games from Steam on my Mac

01:15:37 ◼   ► when it's booted into Windows,

01:15:38 ◼   ► when it pretends that it's a gaming PC.

01:15:41 ◼   ► I like having one computer that does both of those things.

01:15:44 ◼   ► I also really like game consoles,

01:15:45 ◼   ► so I'm probably not the target market for the Steam Box.

01:15:48 ◼   ► But there's a lot of noise about them,

01:15:51 ◼   ► and we'll wait a year and see how well

01:15:53 ◼   ► all those different vendors who are feeling Steam Boxes

01:15:55 ◼   ► feel about their contribution to Valve's platform.

01:15:58 ◼   ► I'm kind of surprised that anybody thinks there's going to be a market for more than

01:16:02 ◼   ► one of these things.

01:16:03 ◼   ► Like, why is it a category and not just one box?

01:16:06 ◼   ► If it was one box, it would be a game console.

01:16:09 ◼   ► Right.

01:16:10 ◼   ► Well, isn't-- I mean, but it kind of is.

01:16:11 ◼   ► It's kind of a game console for Steam PC games.

01:16:14 ◼   ► I mean--

01:16:15 ◼   ► But for-- but they wanted to have some of the advantages of gaming PCs.

01:16:19 ◼   ► And one of those advantages is it's not the same hardware for everybody.

01:16:22 ◼   ► It changed every year.

01:16:23 ◼   ► You can get a new, faster, better one that makes the games prettier.

01:16:26 ◼   ► And that's not true of consoles.

01:16:27 ◼   ► That's true.

01:16:29 ◼   ► Like I said, the threading a needle.

01:16:31 ◼   ► I don't know how much room there is between

01:16:33 ◼   ► a gaming PC and a game console. It could be

01:16:35 ◼   ► they get squished from above or below,

01:16:37 ◼   ► depending on how you draw this diagram, by

01:16:39 ◼   ► the consoles and just the entire world

01:16:41 ◼   ► of PC gaming gets squished away. Or it could be

01:16:43 ◼   ► that they get squished by real PC gaming

01:16:45 ◼   ► and it turns out the only people left who aren't just

01:16:47 ◼   ► exclusively playing consoles really want a full-fledged

01:16:49 ◼   ► gaming PC and they don't want the

01:16:51 ◼   ► Steam Box. I don't think it's entirely

01:16:53 ◼   ► crazy and I think it is smart for Valve

01:16:55 ◼   ► to get into hardware because they've shown that they understand that there's more to

01:16:59 ◼   ► the world than what they're currently doing, and Steam was a great idea and a smashing

01:17:02 ◼   ► success and they continue to also make great games on top of that.

01:17:06 ◼   ► If they can also make great hardware that's popular, more power to them.

01:17:10 ◼   ► But having third parties do it for you kind of looks like the Windows Phone strategy,

01:17:14 ◼   ► where we're going to encourage this ecosystem of compatible hardware and I don't know.

01:17:18 ◼   ► We'll see.

01:17:19 ◼   ► Do you think it's a problem, am I correct, that the Steam boxes all have gamepad controller

01:17:26 ◼   ► types and not like keyboard mouse kind of schemes?

01:17:29 ◼   ► That's another problem, like the controller that they have is interesting and it's trying

01:17:33 ◼   ► to make up for the fact that you don't have a keyboard and a mouse, and again, a lot of

01:17:37 ◼   ► the people who play PC games, maybe, you know, they like mouse and keyboard, and if you take

01:17:42 ◼   ► that away, maybe they're not interested anymore, but maybe they weren't really wed to mouse

01:17:46 ◼   ► and keyboard, maybe they just wanted something that lets them play first person shooters

01:17:49 ◼   ► and if we can give them a better first person shooter control, I don't know. This is all

01:17:52 ◼   ► a big experiment with, you know, and that's kind of why Valve must like the fact that

01:17:57 ◼   ► they're not the ones sort of doing the experiment. You guys make the hardware up, you might sell

01:18:01 ◼   ► some. I mean, yeah.

01:18:02 ◼   ► Well, the software is not easy either. I mean, I think that, I think the input and like monitor

01:18:08 ◼   ► class, like how far you sit and the input devices you use, I think that will sink this

01:18:13 ◼   ► thing because I think if you want to play a first person shooter using a gamepad on

01:18:17 ◼   ► on a TV, you'll buy a game console. They're probably going to be better at it, and they're

01:18:20 ◼   ► cheaper and they're better managed and they're more popular and everything else.

01:18:24 ◼   ► They're mapping their control scheme to keyboard and mouse. Have you seen the controller? It

01:18:28 ◼   ► looks like two big flat touchpad areas. One of them is the mouse and one of them is WASD,

01:18:34 ◼   ► basically, for legacy games. Because you have to be able to play Half-Life 2, Portal, and

01:18:40 ◼   ► all that stuff. You have to be able to make the legacy games work, otherwise how can you

01:18:43 ◼   ► get a Steam box to have access to zero games? In theory, in the future, games can come out

01:18:47 ◼   ► that controller in mind if it becomes popular, but they have to be able to support the old

01:18:50 ◼   ► games.

01:18:51 ◼   ► And that's what they're trying to do.

01:18:52 ◼   ► And supposedly it works better than using like an Xbox 360 controller if you're playing

01:18:57 ◼   ► first person shooters.

01:18:58 ◼   ► It's more like a keyboard and a mouse.

01:19:00 ◼   ► But I don't know if like, I don't know if it's going to be worthwhile.

01:19:05 ◼   ► Who is the customer for these Steam boxes?

01:19:07 ◼   ► There sure are a lot of them.

01:19:08 ◼   ► They sure come in a lot of different sizes and shapes and price points.

01:19:10 ◼   ► And PC gamers really do love Steam, but I'm not sure what their prospects are.

01:19:15 ◼   ► Yeah, I mean looking at this controller. I just looked it up first of all it looks ridiculous

01:19:18 ◼   ► but I mean like and and I

01:19:21 ◼   ► I'm really out of touch with this stuff because I haven't I haven't been heavily into games in a while

01:19:25 ◼   ► But when I was heavily into games

01:19:27 ◼   ► I loved PC games

01:19:29 ◼   ► And I really didn't get that much enjoyment out of console games because I loved not only did

01:19:34 ◼   ► I love the kind of games that just work a lot better with keyboard mouse and big monitor big high-res monitor in front of your

01:19:39 ◼   ► face like RTS's

01:19:41 ◼   ► And builders like Sim City and stuff like that like not only did I love that kind of game more

01:19:45 ◼   ► But even for the kind of games that work on both, I just liked having a mouse better than

01:19:51 ◼   ► a gamepad.

01:19:52 ◼   ► And I was always, and maybe because I was just used to it, I was better at it with the

01:19:54 ◼   ► mouse.

01:19:55 ◼   ► I was more precise with the mouse.

01:19:56 ◼   ► And playing, even playing shooters on gamepads, like it always felt like, yeah, I'm glad

01:20:00 ◼   ► I didn't have to like set up a LAN to play this with my friends or anything, but I'm

01:20:04 ◼   ► not enjoying it as much.

01:20:06 ◼   ► You know, like, and, like I feel like, and by the way, and I did love building my own

01:20:10 ◼   ► PCs.

01:20:11 ◼   ► If I was going to go back to being a PC gamer,

01:20:15 ◼   ► I mean, being a PC gamer takes a lot of time investment

01:20:19 ◼   ► just to manage all the software crap you have to deal with. And the Steam Box will, of course,

01:20:23 ◼   ► solve a lot of that in theory, but

01:20:27 ◼   ► if you're already going to devote a bunch of time into this hobby because you love it so much, you probably

01:20:31 ◼   ► are very likely to also want to build your own computer. Or, like, you know,

01:20:35 ◼   ► I think the market for people who are going to want to buy a

01:20:39 ◼   ► pre-made gaming PC that they had no part in building and that they might not be able to

01:20:43 ◼   ► upgrade very easily, if at all, to play games on a TV that aren't console games on a kind

01:20:49 ◼   ► of console controller that is not a keyboard and mouse.

01:20:52 ◼   ► There's so many big leaps here that I think are just leaping right out of the market.

01:20:57 ◼   ► Well, there's another strategic reason that Valve kind of has to do this to sort of protect

01:21:01 ◼   ► itself, and it's that Microsoft has been less and less interested in making Windows

01:21:05 ◼   ► a hospitable environment for gaming.

01:21:08 ◼   ► And if you look at Valve's business, I'm sure they sell a lot of Mac games too, but they're

01:21:13 ◼   ► mostly selling quote-unquote "PC" games.

01:21:15 ◼   ► And so the part of Steam Box that's maybe the least interesting to consumers, maybe

01:21:20 ◼   ► the most interesting from Valve's perspective, which is we need to sell our games on Linux

01:21:24 ◼   ► or an OS that we have some control over to get away from Windows.

01:21:28 ◼   ► Because Valve has whined about Windows 8 not being particularly hospitable for games in

01:21:33 ◼   ► the early going.

01:21:34 ◼   ► And just in general—

01:21:35 ◼   ► To be fair, Windows 8 is particularly inhospitable for everybody.

01:21:38 ◼   ► For humans, yeah.

01:21:39 ◼   ► So, like, if all that comes out of this is that Steam Box is a total flop, but a huge

01:21:45 ◼   ► portion of games available on Steam run on, like, maybe they don't call it a Steam Box

01:21:50 ◼   ► anymore, but like, if you mostly use your PC for gaming, Valve can say, "Oh, when you

01:21:56 ◼   ► play our games, you should play them, like, in the Steam OS," or whatever they call the

01:22:00 ◼   ► Linux thing that they're going to use there.

01:22:02 ◼   ► it's kind of a hedge against like our future shouldn't depend on Microsoft because Microsoft

01:22:07 ◼   ► cares about Xbox One, you know, with gaming, they care slightly less about Windows and who knows

01:22:13 ◼   ► with Microsoft's new CEO search what kind of direction the company will be taken in.

01:22:16 ◼   ► So this is probably a smart hedge just to say we should really look into if we're going to be a

01:22:22 ◼   ► platform, we should really look into having more control and not being beholden to Microsoft for

01:22:27 ◼   ► so much of our business because certainly Sony is not beholden to Microsoft for its gaming business,

01:22:31 ◼   ► right and you know

01:22:32 ◼   ► Microsoft doesn't beholden to anyone else and so on so I think it's a wise strategic move for valve to be doing this and I

01:22:39 ◼   ► Think it matters less whether the steam boxes

01:22:41 ◼   ► Competes with game consoles or anything it just like it's kind of like steam itself

01:22:45 ◼   ► The payoff will be many many years now, and it may not be the same payoff that they expected

01:22:49 ◼   ► But it's worth doing I think

01:22:51 ◼   ► Marco I'd like to ask you guys about some of your past game experiences, but before we do that would you it's all moon-based commander

01:23:00 ◼   ► I know. Would you tell me about anything else that's awesome?

01:23:03 ◼   ► I would love to. It is our good friends at Squarespace, the all-in-one platform that

01:23:08 ◼   ► makes it fast and easy to create your own professional website or online portfolio.

01:23:12 ◼   ► For a free trial and 10% off, go to squarespace.com and use offer code "marco."

01:23:17 ◼   ► Once again, I apologize to my co-hosts. They will get their time, I'm sure.

01:23:21 ◼   ► Squarespace is always improving their platform. They're always adding new features, new designs,

01:23:26 ◼   ► and even better support.

01:23:27 ◼   ► Their designs are beautiful to start with,

01:23:29 ◼   ► and you can customize whatever you want about them,

01:23:32 ◼   ► from high-level customization using their nice, easy tools,

01:23:36 ◼   ► all the way down to code customization,

01:23:38 ◼   ► JavaScript injection, whatever you want to do.

01:23:40 ◼   ► You can do all that stuff with Squarespace.

01:23:42 ◼   ► All the designs are also responsive,

01:23:45 ◼   ► so your site looks like its own theme

01:23:47 ◼   ► everywhere on any device.

01:23:48 ◼   ► It doesn't look like some generic mobile theme or anything.

01:23:51 ◼   ► You have your style at any size on every device.

01:23:55 ◼   ► They have an incredible support team at Squarespace.

01:23:59 ◼   ► They have over 70 employees working right here

01:24:02 ◼   ► in New York City in a place nicknamed the Care Bear Lair

01:24:05 ◼   ► because they are so good at customer support.

01:24:07 ◼   ► They've even won customer support awards.

01:24:10 ◼   ► Squarespace is awesome.

01:24:11 ◼   ► It starts at just $8 a month.

01:24:13 ◼   ► This includes a free domain name

01:24:14 ◼   ► if you sign up for a whole year up front.

01:24:16 ◼   ► So you can start a free trial today.

01:24:18 ◼   ► Now, this is a real free trial.

01:24:20 ◼   ► No credit card required.

01:24:22 ◼   ► You don't have to enter in your stuff

01:24:23 ◼   ► and then remember to cancel it later on.

01:24:25 ◼   ► Nope, no credit card required, a real free trial.

01:24:29 ◼   ► Start today, start building your website.

01:24:30 ◼   ► If you like it, sign up.

01:24:32 ◼   ► If you don't, no pressure.

01:24:33 ◼   ► Squarespace.com, use offer code Marco for 10% off.

01:24:37 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to Squarespace for sponsoring our show.

01:24:39 ◼   ► It's a great platform.

01:24:40 ◼   ► We use it for our site,

01:24:42 ◼   ► and we really appreciate all their support of our show

01:24:45 ◼   ► and of every other show in the universe.

01:24:47 ◼   ► Thank you very much to Squarespace for sponsoring.

01:24:51 ◼   ► So I wanted to ask you, you had said something a minute ago about how you didn't have to

01:24:57 ◼   ► set up your own network and it just made me remember.

01:24:59 ◼   ► So when I was a kid I used to play quite a lot of games in both all of the Nintendo consoles

01:25:06 ◼   ► and many, many, many PC games.

01:25:09 ◼   ► And I was just curious if you guys had the hilarious experiences of having your friends

01:25:14 ◼   ► over where they would bring their mini towers and their CRT monitors that weighed a thousand

01:25:20 ◼   ► and you're in like sixth or seventh grade at the time, so you can barely lift them on

01:25:24 ◼   ► your own. And you would get like these 40-foot null-modem cables and string them together

01:25:29 ◼   ► and play Wolf 3D or Doom against each other or whatever the case may be. Like, I just,

01:25:34 ◼   ► God, I have such fond memories of that and I was curious if I was the only one.

01:25:38 ◼   ► Yeah, it was a nightmare. I mean, part of the fun of being a high school kid and trying

01:25:44 ◼   ► to hang out with my geek friends and set up some kind of land at somebody's house to

01:25:48 ◼   ► to play Total Annihilation, which is all I did in high school, which actually turned

01:25:52 ◼   ► out to be a pretty good experience.

01:25:56 ◼   ► It was funny because, and I think this is kind of a motto for a lot of PC gaming, or

01:26:00 ◼   ► not a motto, it's a common result of all PC gaming, is like, you have to deal with so

01:26:06 ◼   ► much crap to set it up.

01:26:08 ◼   ► And ours was like a lot of physical moving stuff around, physical plugging stuff in,

01:26:12 ◼   ► figuring out, oh god, why does this network cable that we just made yesterday, and we've

01:26:17 ◼   ► we've never made a network cable before,

01:26:18 ◼   ► why does this all of a sudden not work?

01:26:20 ◼   ► Or why can your computer see the other three

01:26:23 ◼   ► but then one of them can't see you?

01:26:26 ◼   ► And oh God, you didn't install the map.

01:26:28 ◼   ► Or like you start, you get all into the game

01:26:30 ◼   ► and you realize one guy doesn't have the newest patch

01:26:32 ◼   ► and so half the units are disabled.

01:26:34 ◼   ► You know, there's, it was a whole bunch of crap.

01:26:37 ◼   ► It was a whole bunch of time wasting crap,

01:26:40 ◼   ► system administration stuff, rebooting, installing patches,

01:26:42 ◼   ► installing new versions of the game, installing new maps,

01:26:45 ◼   ► getting everything, it was such a nightmare that we would

01:26:48 ◼   ► we would start bringing, and all of these computers were like

01:26:52 ◼   ► our computers or our family's computers so that we couldn't really leave them there

01:26:56 ◼   ► for the next week or anything like, so we would like every weekend

01:27:00 ◼   ► me and a couple friends would bring all our computers over to

01:27:04 ◼   ► one of the two houses that had network switches because

01:27:07 ◼   ► like two of the houses had two computers because the parents like had two computers

01:27:10 ◼   ► so

01:27:10 ◼   ► you know we'd go to, we'd congregate on those houses, plug in, try to figure everything out

01:27:14 ◼   ► we wouldn't even start playing until 12 or 1 in the morning.

01:27:18 ◼   ► Oh yeah. Oh yeah.

01:27:20 ◼   ► Because by the time the game actually launches and you're actually in it, it would be 1 AM

01:27:23 ◼   ► because we would have started setting up at 8 and, you know, been installing patches and

01:27:29 ◼   ► crap until then. And that's... this is like the view of PC gaming that I still have because

01:27:34 ◼   ► I didn't play a lot of games after mid-college or so because I just kind of ran out of time

01:27:40 ◼   ► and then after college I got a job and didn't have time then and all my friends were in

01:27:42 ◼   ► different places, so it kind of fell out of gaming. But is PC gaming, I mean, obviously

01:27:48 ◼   ► nowadays you could bring over LCDs or a laptop, which would be amazing. I mean, we all had

01:27:55 ◼   ► home-built desktops with 19-inch CRT monitors, so it was quite an ordeal. These days I imagine

01:28:03 ◼   ► it's a lot better, but I bet you still have a lot of that software crap to deal with.

01:28:07 ◼   ► Is that still the case?

01:28:08 ◼   ► It's not as bad as it used to be, and for the most part, if you're lucky and you have

01:28:15 ◼   ► some minimum amount of knowledge, you can get a similar experience to that as what people

01:28:19 ◼   ► are getting these days on their PCs.

01:28:21 ◼   ► You get a headset mic, you get the internet for your networking problems, everyone has

01:28:25 ◼   ► their own screen, you're not all physically in the same place, but it's close-ish.

01:28:29 ◼   ► People still have LAN parties, like at the PAX conference they have a giant LAN room

01:28:34 ◼   ► where you can bring your own PC or use the ones that you have there, and they still do

01:28:37 ◼   ► that.

01:28:38 ◼   ► I see people in the giant LAN rooms at conventions and stuff, it's just row after row of people

01:28:43 ◼   ► sitting at PCs looking at their screens wearing headset mics, I think, how important is it

01:28:47 ◼   ► that these people are all in the same room?

01:28:48 ◼   ► And it's not as important as it was when you and your friends were all in the same room,

01:28:51 ◼   ► because the technology, like it's now just you, the screen, the mouse, the keyboard,

01:28:55 ◼   ► and the headset mic, and the fact that the guy you're yelling at is four seats away means

01:28:57 ◼   ► nothing because you never even look at him.

01:29:00 ◼   ► Maybe in smaller atmospheres it would be more important, but I think for the most part that

01:29:04 ◼   ► internet and technology has come to make most of that unimportant.

01:29:09 ◼   ► One thing that the younger people might remember is that the original Xbox, you could bring

01:29:12 ◼   ► that over to someone's house, hook it up, and play Halo, sort of a multi-room, multi-player

01:29:17 ◼   ► Halo experience.

01:29:19 ◼   ► And that, I think, was maybe the last thing to be lugged from house to house for original

01:29:23 ◼   ► Xboxes.

01:29:24 ◼   ► But nowadays, no one lugs their consoles.

01:29:26 ◼   ► I think they basically keep them in their house and use the magic of the internet to

01:29:29 ◼   ► do that stuff.

01:29:30 ◼   ► It's funny to me because channeling my inner bitter old man, like we were talking about

01:29:36 ◼   ► last episode, I just remember so vividly the pain of finding a null-modem cable, which

01:29:42 ◼   ► looked in many ways like a serial cable, but it was different.

01:29:46 ◼   ► And then you had to string them together, and then you had to set up everyone in the

01:29:49 ◼   ► same really, really hot room because no matter how big the room was and how good the air

01:29:54 ◼   ► air conditioning was, when you put all of these humongous machines with these CRTs that

01:30:00 ◼   ► weren't exactly cool either, and you put them all in this little room with all these teenage

01:30:04 ◼   ► dudes that probably don't have the best hygiene anyway, and then you sit there and eat Doritos

01:30:09 ◼   ► and Mountain Dew for hours, and just playing these games like Doom and whatnot, when you

01:30:15 ◼   ► can scream and yell at each other and you're right next to each other.

01:30:19 ◼   ► And then I remember, somebody mentioned in the chat, and one of my all-time favorites

01:30:22 ◼   ► was playing Descent, the first Descent, and playing that not only against your friends,

01:30:30 ◼   ► but locally, but also playing it via modem directly between two friends.

01:30:36 ◼   ► And then eventually when Kali or Cali or whatever it was called came out and it would let the

01:30:44 ◼   ► internet masquerade as an IPX network, which was all that most of these games supported

01:30:48 ◼   ► at the time.

01:30:49 ◼   ► And oh my god, it was so much fun.

01:30:51 ◼   ► And it was such a defining part of my childhood,

01:30:55 ◼   ► like between that and all of the Nintendo consoles.

01:30:58 ◼   ► I know I jokingly begrudged it as recently as earlier

01:31:02 ◼   ► this episode, the whole game thing.

01:31:04 ◼   ► But god, it was such a big part of my upbringing

01:31:07 ◼   ► in my childhood.

01:31:08 ◼   ► And I spent so much time playing these games.

01:31:10 ◼   ► And it's just so weird to me not to get all--

01:31:13 ◼   ► What happened to you, Gaze?

01:31:15 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:31:15 ◼   ► I just grew out-- I don't mean this to be dismissive,

01:31:18 ◼   ► But I guess I just grew out of it.

01:31:20 ◼   ► Like it just wasn't a priority to me anymore.

01:31:22 ◼   ► And I can't even remember the last game that I played that I was really, really into.

01:31:28 ◼   ► I guess maybe Metal Gear Solid on the original PlayStation?

01:31:31 ◼   ► And it was probably not the first Metal Gear Solid either.

01:31:34 ◼   ► Well, when PlayStation 3s are $99 in a couple of years, I'll send you one and you can

01:31:38 ◼   ► play Journey.

01:31:42 ◼   ► You're not going to leave me alone until I play Journey, are you?

01:31:44 ◼   ► You're not going to leave anybody alone.

01:31:45 ◼   ► Marco, you're still on your schedule too.

01:31:48 ◼   ► Wait, what was Marco's schedule?

01:31:51 ◼   ► It's the whenever the hell Marco gets around to it schedule.

01:31:54 ◼   ► Like most things in his life.

01:31:56 ◼   ► It's very different these days that networking is ubiquitous, or if not ubiquitous, darn

01:32:03 ◼   ► near ubiquitous.

01:32:05 ◼   ► And it's such a far cry from what we had to deal with.

01:32:09 ◼   ► And I'm not saying that to make it sound like I walked uphill both ways.

01:32:12 ◼   ► That's not at all the point.

01:32:13 ◼   ► It's surprising to me how much technology has changed in so little time, where our children

01:32:19 ◼   ► will not have any of these woes that we had.

01:32:23 ◼   ► I remember, to connect to the internet originally, my dad and I spent literally a couple of weeks

01:32:29 ◼   ► trying to figure out, I believe, not only the modem initialization string, or whatever

01:32:33 ◼   ► you called it, the AT whatever, whatever, whatever string, but then also the correct

01:32:37 ◼   ► What was it? Was it SLIP? S-L-I-P? To figure out the correct SLIP script to write. I've

01:32:46 ◼   ► probably told the story before and I'm sorry. But oh my goodness, it was such pain. When

01:32:52 ◼   ► we finally got it, it was such a sense of accomplishment. It's not the same anymore.

01:32:59 ◼   ► Not that any of the kids these days have different issues that they have to overcome like Windows.

01:33:02 ◼   ► But, nevertheless, it's just so funny to me how different things are today.

01:33:08 ◼   ► I mean, ultimately it's better today.

01:33:10 ◼   ► Oh yeah.

01:33:11 ◼   ► But, you know, I, well, hold on.

01:33:13 ◼   ► Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Fracture, Ting, and Squarespace.

01:33:17 ◼   ► And we'll see you next week.

01:33:18 ◼   ► Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin.

01:33:19 ◼   ► Cause it was accidental.

01:33:20 ◼   ► Oh it was accidental.

01:33:21 ◼   ► John didn't even mean to be.

01:33:22 ◼   ► over they didn't even mean to begin cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental. John

01:33:29 ◼   ► didn't do any research, Margo and Casey wouldn't let him cause it was accidental, it was accidental.

01:33:39 ◼   ► And you can find the show notes at ATP.fm and if you're into Twitter you can follow

01:33:51 ◼   ► Follow them @CASEYLISS

01:33:56 ◼   ► So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M

01:34:00 ◼   ► Auntie Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C

01:34:06 ◼   ► USA, Syracuse

01:34:08 ◼   ► It's accidental

01:34:11 ◼   ► They didn't mean to

01:34:14 ◼   ► Accidental

01:34:16 ◼   ► Tech broadcast so long

01:34:21 ◼   ► I disagree with something that John said a few minutes back, which is about how network

01:34:26 ◼   ► play kind of replaced in-person play.

01:34:30 ◼   ► I don't think it's anywhere near the same thing.

01:34:32 ◼   ► And the headset and the constant voice chat does improve things a lot, but I don't know.

01:34:38 ◼   ► There's something about just being in the same room or being in the next room over from

01:34:44 ◼   ► the people who you're playing against, and when you start marching into their base and

01:34:48 ◼   ► you can hear them swear and get all upset about it.

01:34:52 ◼   ► Or we had a rule during our LAN games for total annihilation.

01:34:56 ◼   ► We had a rule that you were not allowed to mute the sound

01:35:00 ◼   ► or to wear headphones.

01:35:00 ◼   ► You had to use audible sound.

01:35:03 ◼   ► You can turn it down, but it had to be audible.

01:35:06 ◼   ► And so you could, there was even strategy in that.

01:35:09 ◼   ► Be careful what you click,

01:35:10 ◼   ► because the other person might hear you click on a big unit

01:35:12 ◼   ► that makes a certain sound and they'll know you have one.

01:35:14 ◼   ► Or something like that.

01:35:15 ◼   ► There's all these little factors you could add in

01:35:17 ◼   ► or that just kind of happened, that made it a more interesting, more rich experience to

01:35:23 ◼   ► like be in the same room as people and be playing with people as opposed to just everyone

01:35:27 ◼   ► meeting on the same server together, you know?

01:35:30 ◼   ► And I think looking at that, what probably really killed the LAN party as being a thing,

01:35:36 ◼   ► besides how incredibly expensive and complicated and time consuming it was, was the N64 getting

01:35:43 ◼   ► four players.

01:35:46 ◼   ► like because the N64 came out at roughly the same time that we were doing all this stuff and

01:35:50 ◼   ► Or a little before but it really came into its own by that time. So like we were faced with all right

01:35:56 ◼   ► Well, what do you want to do tonight?

01:35:57 ◼   ► Do you want to all bring your computers over and stick around with Windows for two hours?

01:36:01 ◼   ► Or do you want to just come over and play Goldeneye like yeah, it's already here and Mario Kart, right?

01:36:08 ◼   ► You know, hey, you know you two guys bring controllers. We only have two otherwise, we're finally yeah

01:36:13 ◼   ► You know, like it was like I feel like in person playing of

01:36:16 ◼   ► Four player good n64 and forward games. I think that really did more to kill the LAN party

01:36:24 ◼   ► Well, I didn't say that it was the same but it did replace it in the same way that when you went from what?

01:36:29 ◼   ► Replaced your LAN parties what replaced it was four player script screen for player script split screen is not the same because everybody can see

01:36:36 ◼   ► Everybody else's screen, but it did replace it

01:36:38 ◼   ► So, like I said, if you look at how are people doing most of their multiplayer gaming it used to be

01:36:42 ◼   ► be that the super hardcore gamers were having LAN parties.

01:36:46 ◼   ► Nowadays, the super hardcore gamers

01:36:48 ◼   ► are sitting in front of a screen with a headset on.

01:36:50 ◼   ► So it replaced it.

01:36:51 ◼   ► And I was thinking of the in-person thing,

01:36:53 ◼   ► like the places where LAN parties still exist.

01:36:55 ◼   ► At conventions, often when I see people playing at giant LAN

01:36:58 ◼   ► parties at conventions, they're playing at the LAN party

01:37:00 ◼   ► the same way they play at home, which

01:37:01 ◼   ► is headphones on, headset on, staring

01:37:04 ◼   ► at the screen in front of them.

01:37:05 ◼   ► Which is not the same, you're right.

01:37:07 ◼   ► But that is what has replaced-- those other aspects that

01:37:11 ◼   ► different were deemed not as important as the aspects that they like.

01:37:15 ◼   ► Just like when you went to four-player split-screen GoldenEye, the aspects that you were missing

01:37:19 ◼   ► having private screens were significant but were not the most important thing.

01:37:23 ◼   ► The most important thing is you were having fun with your friends.

01:37:26 ◼   ► For most people, the inconvenience of traveling to be the same place, a lot of that has to

01:37:32 ◼   ► do with scheduling.

01:37:34 ◼   ► Getting everybody when they're all free at the same time and can travel to someone's

01:37:37 ◼   ► house to sit on their couch together to play a game, even when you've eliminated all

01:37:42 ◼   ► LAN party stuff, it's harder to do that than it is to, "Hey, when dinner is done

01:37:47 ◼   ► and the kids are in bed, let me just wander into my computer room and everyone get online

01:37:51 ◼   ► the same way we do our podcast.

01:37:52 ◼   ► Everyone just get online at nine o'clock and that works out."

01:37:55 ◼   ► So it is definitely different and there are aspects that are not as good and you're

01:37:59 ◼   ► missing things, but convenience wins out eventually.

01:38:02 ◼   ► And that's true, but to me, some of my favorite memories of doing these "land parties" or

01:38:08 ◼   ► "null modem parties" or whatever you want to call them, was if not the hooping and hollering

01:38:13 ◼   ► that happened during the games like Marco was describing, but man, the trash talk afterwards,

01:38:18 ◼   ► like after a session or a game or a round or whatever was over, when you would just

01:38:24 ◼   ► happily fun getting each other's faces and start screaming and yelling about "Oh, I can't

01:38:28 ◼   ► believe you did that, you wuss!" and "Oh, I totally slaughtered you on that level" and

01:38:32 ◼   ► blah, blah, blah. Maybe it's just because I'm obnoxious, but oh, that was the most fun

01:38:36 ◼   ► in the world. And that just, I don't see, and it's hard for me to say because I don't

01:38:40 ◼   ► really play games that much anymore, but I don't see that happening at a LAN party, or

01:38:44 ◼   ► especially if you're not co-located.

01:38:47 ◼   ► Well, I'm pretty sure trash talk still works over headset mics. Someone who plays PC games

01:38:52 ◼   ► can confirm to me that perhaps trash talk still is a thing on the internet.

01:38:56 ◼   ► You know what I mean.

01:38:57 ◼   ► I'm pretty sure trash talk is the only thing that goes over headset mics.

01:39:00 ◼   ► true. You know what I'm saying? I was trying to do like verbal sarcasm tags because sometimes

01:39:05 ◼   ► people don't catch it like when when I said the Mac Mini has a core tube duo and people correct

01:39:10 ◼   ► corrected me as if I was serious. That was sarcasm folks. We invented it in New York I think.

01:39:15 ◼   ► Well everything comes from New York because we're the best. Oh god. We? We? Mr. Ohio? I'm sorry.

01:39:23 ◼   ► Accepting this. Well I- you left so I'm at least here now. It's more important to be from there

01:39:29 ◼   ► than to be there.

01:39:30 ◼   ► Hey, hey, John, where were you born?

01:39:33 ◼   ► What does your birth certificate say?

01:39:35 ◼   ► What state?

01:39:36 ◼   ► New York.

01:39:37 ◼   ► And would you ask me?

01:39:38 ◼   ► Oh, I don't know, Virginia, right?

01:39:40 ◼   ► Connecticut?

01:39:41 ◼   ► I don't know, some crazy state.

01:39:43 ◼   ► New York, John, New York.

01:39:45 ◼   ► How long were you in New York?

01:39:46 ◼   ► At least a few minutes, right?

01:39:47 ◼   ► You have to have your formative years there.

01:39:49 ◼   ► The thing that molds you into the man that you are, your formative years are called formative

01:39:53 ◼   ► for a reason.

01:39:54 ◼   ► Where did you spend those years, Casey?

01:39:56 ◼   ► So, well, not New York.

01:39:58 ◼   ► So I was zero through two in Fort Montgomery, New York.

01:40:03 ◼   ► Then we bounced around for a little bit.

01:40:05 ◼   ► When I was a really young kid from kindergarten through second grade, I believe it was, I

01:40:11 ◼   ► was in Carmel, New York.

01:40:13 ◼   ► Carmel, New York is not New York.

01:40:15 ◼   ► Come on, it's upstate.

01:40:17 ◼   ► It's not that upstate.

01:40:18 ◼   ► My God, it's…

01:40:19 ◼   ► Yeah, that's basically Canada.

01:40:20 ◼   ► Marco is practically upstate.

01:40:21 ◼   ► Carmel is like an hour and a half from New York City.

01:40:26 ◼   ► It is not that upstate.

01:40:28 ◼   ► You can get pretty out there in an hour and a half from New York City.

01:40:31 ◼   ► The only way you can get an hour and a half from New York City and not be upstate is by

01:40:34 ◼   ► going east.

01:40:35 ◼   ► So into the ocean?

01:40:37 ◼   ► Oh, Long Island, I guess.

01:40:39 ◼   ► Yeah.

01:40:40 ◼   ► There's bridges and tunnels.

01:40:41 ◼   ► You can get there.

01:40:42 ◼   ► It's traffic and wine.

01:40:43 ◼   ► Oh, goodness.

01:40:44 ◼   ► One thing, actually, that I wanted to mention here, only because we were talking about this

01:40:48 ◼   ► LAN party and PC gaming crap, is that one of the four core guys that I had these LAN

01:40:55 ◼   ► with is getting married this spring and as part of the bachelor party we're like renting

01:41:00 ◼   ► a beach house somewhere for like a weekend and we want to play land games again. So I

01:41:04 ◼   ► think what I'm going to do to have this done is, and we don't want to play new games, we

01:41:10 ◼   ► want to play Total Annihilation and maybe Supreme Commander at the newest which came

01:41:14 ◼   ► out in like 2004 or something. So not new games by any stretch. So what I'm thinking

01:41:22 ◼   ► is I'm thinking of configuring, because I don't want to have to spend this whole weekend

01:41:27 ◼   ► downloading stuff over God knows what connection and configuring stuff there. That's not a

01:41:31 ◼   ► good use of a weekend in a beach house. So I was thinking TechServe will rent you MacBook

01:41:37 ◼   ► Pros like by the day or by the week and for a pretty reasonable price. So I was thinking

01:41:42 ◼   ► I could just like rent like six MacBook Pros and have like a pre-configured Parallels VM

01:41:50 ◼   ► that I could just, that I would set up beforehand and just copy to all of them and play that

01:41:56 ◼   ► way. Is that plausible, you think? You could try Boxer. Like, it's a DOS game,

01:42:00 ◼   ► right? You could try Boxer. No, no, no. Unfortunately, these are Windows

01:42:04 ◼   ► games. These are like, like, Total Annihilation is like a Windows 98 era game, but it works

01:42:08 ◼   ► on, it still works on modern Windows. It doesn't run on DOS?

01:42:11 ◼   ► No. And Supreme Commander is like a DirectX 9 game. It's pretty, relatively recent. It's

01:42:17 ◼   ► it's ten years old, but relatively recent.

01:42:20 ◼   ► Why don't you just boot the MacBook Pros into Windows to play the game?

01:42:24 ◼   ► Because I don't know how—I think that that might take too long to get a real boot camp

01:42:30 ◼   ► partition.

01:42:31 ◼   ► I guess I could image it somehow.

01:42:33 ◼   ► I don't know how to do that, though.

01:42:35 ◼   ► I don't know.

01:42:37 ◼   ► Those imaging products for the PC.

01:42:39 ◼   ► Anyway, either of those things should probably work.

01:42:41 ◼   ► For a total annihilation, any one of those things should work.

01:42:43 ◼   ► It should run reasonably in a VM.

01:42:45 ◼   ► Just try it once on your Mac Pro to see if it does fine in VMware.

01:42:51 ◼   ► And to answer the chat people, the reason I don't just get Windows machines is because

01:42:56 ◼   ► I want to have all this set up before I rent the computers and before I get there.

01:43:01 ◼   ► Have a VM set up so I can just copy it over and be done with it and not spend hours and

01:43:05 ◼   ► hours and hours making this work.

01:43:08 ◼   ► I predict that no matter what you do to prepare for this, part of the LAN party experience

01:43:13 ◼   ► will be preserved and that will be the part of you dicking around with the computers.

01:43:16 ◼   ► Almost definitely.

01:43:17 ◼   ► No matter what.

01:43:18 ◼   ► So be glad.

01:43:19 ◼   ► That shouldn't be a failure.

01:43:20 ◼   ► That should be considered part of the success.

01:43:24 ◼   ► You know, I've tried to get so back into games so many times.

01:43:27 ◼   ► There's this great other podcast called Three Moves Ahead, and it's like a strategy gaming

01:43:31 ◼   ► podcast, and it's also a lot of good stuff just about people.

01:43:34 ◼   ► They have good chemistry there, so it's an interesting show.

01:43:37 ◼   ► But I try to get into that, and I listen to the episodes that were about ancient games

01:43:41 ◼   ► that I'm aware of, but all the ones about new games, I don't know what the heck they're

01:43:45 ◼   ► talking about.

01:43:46 ◼   ► And it's like this whole world that's happened that's had us moved on for like ten years

01:43:51 ◼   ► since I stopped paying attention to it, and I feel like I can't get back into it now.

01:43:57 ◼   ► Like I'm excited to play ancient games with my ancient friends on this one occasion.

01:44:03 ◼   ► I'm excited about that, but like I don't want to play Total Annihilation against strangers

01:44:06 ◼   ► on the internet today.

01:44:07 ◼   ► Well, you can look at it the good way and the bad way.

01:44:12 ◼   ► The bad way is that you're missing out on all these great games and you are missing

01:44:14 ◼   ► out on them.

01:44:15 ◼   ► But the good way is that by being ignorant for so long, in your future somewhere lies

01:44:20 ◼   ► a time when you're going to somehow stumble upon or find yourself playing a modern game,

01:44:26 ◼   ► and you're going to be like, "Oh my god, I didn't know.

01:44:28 ◼   ► When did this happen to games?"

01:44:30 ◼   ► And it will be interesting.

01:44:31 ◼   ► Like, it happened to me with console games, because I never owned game consoles because

01:44:34 ◼   ► because my parents didn't let me have one,

01:44:36 ◼   ► and I stopped kind of playing them over my friend's house

01:44:38 ◼   ► once I really got into computers,

01:44:40 ◼   ► because that sort of dominated my life.

01:44:41 ◼   ► And around the SNES era, I kind of faded away from consoles.

01:44:45 ◼   ► And the next time I paid any attention at all to consoles

01:44:48 ◼   ► was when I saw on my cousin's Nintendo 64, Mario 64,

01:44:51 ◼   ► I'm like, "Oh my God, when did this happen?"

01:44:53 ◼   ► It's not like I hadn't seen 3D graphics before,

01:44:54 ◼   ► like we were all playing Quake with Voodoo cards

01:44:56 ◼   ► or whatever, or a friend's house.

01:44:58 ◼   ► But seeing a game console with an analog stick

01:45:00 ◼   ► and seeing Mario 64 was just like a shock to my system

01:45:03 ◼   ► totally brought me back to console gaming and it also helped at that point I was old enough to buy my own so in your

01:45:07 ◼   ► Future somewhere you will have your mario 64 a moment and you will probably get back into it

01:45:12 ◼   ► But in the meantime, you should have used my strategy with cars

01:45:14 ◼   ► Which is I'll never drive or you know with the exception of seeing here

01:45:18 ◼   ► I'm 5 see any of these cars in real life or have anything to do with them

01:45:21 ◼   ► But I've been reading car magazines since I was like 10 years old like continuously. So despite the fact that I

01:45:27 ◼   ► Didn't own any cars until many many years and then now I've only had a couple of cars in my entire life

01:45:32 ◼   ► I still feel like I'm in the car scene just by reading car magazines every month for my entire

01:45:39 ◼   ► Adult and half of child life, so you could have been doing that if you really cared

01:45:43 ◼   ► I mean I kind of do it too. I read all the game. I read the gaming news

01:45:47 ◼   ► I read the game console magazines and granted I have like five consoles like those with my TV

01:45:51 ◼   ► But I don't have all of them, and I don't play all the PC games, but I'm aware of them

01:45:54 ◼   ► So it's kind of like a you know

01:45:57 ◼   ► What point is there reading car magazines about cars you never gonna own what point is there reading game magazines about games?

01:46:02 ◼   ► never going to play. It's both kind of the same thing. I do both of them. You know, hearing you

01:46:06 ◼   ► say Voodoo Card, it made me remember, as I'm getting on this nostalgic kick, that one 3D

01:46:12 ◼   ► card that we had, I think it was the first one we got, where you would take this short little stubby

01:46:17 ◼   ► cable and plug it into the VGA out of your actual video card, and then plug it into a VGA in on the

01:46:24 ◼   ► 3D daughter card, and then the VGA out that goes to your monitor was on that 3D daughter card. Oh

01:46:30 ◼   ► Oh my goodness, it was so terrible.

01:46:33 ◼   ► - Yeah, that was the crappy old days.

01:46:35 ◼   ► Like the Voodoo 2, I think, did that.

01:46:37 ◼   ► My first good 3D card was the Voodoo 3

01:46:39 ◼   ► because like the first one, I think,

01:46:40 ◼   ► that was all integrated and didn't have that stupid hack.

01:46:43 ◼   ► - I remember back in the day when I was excited

01:46:45 ◼   ► to get a Sound Blaster so I could listen

01:46:47 ◼   ► to like the sound effects on Carmen Sandiego

01:46:50 ◼   ► as like a 10-year-old or whatever I was.

01:46:52 ◼   ► - Those were the good old days of baiting PC users

01:46:54 ◼   ► when their computers couldn't do basic things

01:46:58 ◼   ► like have an auto switching 10/100 ethernet cable,

01:47:01 ◼   ► you mentioned the Xbox, or a sound card.

01:47:04 ◼   ► What do you need a sound card for?

01:47:06 ◼   ► My computer can make sounds.

01:47:07 ◼   ► - Except our computers could play games

01:47:09 ◼   ► and my very first mouse came with two buttons.

01:47:11 ◼   ► (laughing)

01:47:13 ◼   ► - That's not a feature.

01:47:14 ◼   ► [BLANK_AUDIO]