00:00:00 ◼ ► I've got a problem. I don't understand the noises that my AirPods Pro, I call them the Mark 2,
00:00:07 ◼ ► so this is the AirPods Pro with the better ANC, but before you could get the USB-C charging case.
00:00:16 ◼ ► I don't remember the technical term for it. AirPods Pro 2, because the ones with the case are AirPods Pro 2 parentheses USB-C charging case or something.
00:00:23 ◼ ► Right, yeah, yeah, exactly. We're saying the same thing. Yeah. So they're a little bit older now. I have had no, you know, battery issues,
00:00:29 ◼ ► I've had none of the crackling or whatever it was that a lot of people, including I think Marco, had at some point or another.
00:00:35 ◼ ► That was the first gen AirPods Pro 2, or the AirPods Pro 1. That had those. I haven't heard of any of those issues with the AirPods Pro 2,
00:00:43 ◼ ► I'm still waiting for you to close that parentheses, Casey. You're killing me. Keep going.
00:00:48 ◼ ► I've got a problem with the AirPods, and then you went off on a tangent about which model you had.
00:00:51 ◼ ► I know what problem you have, as we talked about before we started recording, but please get to it.
00:00:59 ◼ ► So here's the thing. I will put one or both of the AirPods back into the charging case, right?
00:01:07 ◼ ► And I not infrequently use them in mono mode. You know, I'll have only one in my ear, the other in the case.
00:01:13 ◼ ► But I don't think it really matters. I'll put one of them back in the case, and I'll hear some sort of noise.
00:01:25 ◼ ► It's like a "doo-doo-doo" or something like that. That's probably wrong, but I can't remember exactly.
00:01:40 ◼ ► But the problem is, the extremely useful error information I get from the case, other than this just completely indecipherable noise,
00:01:47 ◼ ► is that the light is orange. Is that a good orange? I don't know. Is it a bad orange? Maybe. Who could know?
00:01:54 ◼ ► So there's that noise that happens from time to time, and then I feel like there's a "doo-doo" or something like that that happens from time to time.
00:02:01 ◼ ► I really wish I'd had the patience, the energy, and the time to record these on the microphone.
00:02:11 ◼ ► So I don't know what the noises are that my AirPods/the AirPods Pro 2 case makes when I try to reinsert an AirPod.
00:02:20 ◼ ► And I did like five seconds of Googling trying to figure this out and couldn't find anything.
00:02:25 ◼ ► I feel like somebody needs to, and I don't know, maybe Stephen Robles or something put a YouTube video up or something like this,
00:02:31 ◼ ► but somebody needs to have a knowledge base page or some YouTube video that goes through,
00:02:36 ◼ ► "Here's all the different noises your AirPods can make and here's what they mean." Because I need help.
00:02:40 ◼ ► If only you understood the binary language of moisture evaporators, you would know what they're saying.
00:02:45 ◼ ► I have AirPods 4, the non-pro AirPods 4, and these are the first AirPods that have been trying to speak to me,
00:02:59 ◼ ► I give the sound designers credit for being able to convey some sort of emotional state through the beep-boops.
00:03:10 ◼ ► The cases make noise, the AirPods make noise, when I plug the case in it makes a noise,
00:03:41 ◼ ► I get this product that has no on and off switches and just one light that changes a couple different colors,
00:03:46 ◼ ► and it speaks to me with these little beeps and boops, and I just have to sort of do my best.
00:03:55 ◼ ► There were two good episodes of the podcast 20,000 Hertz that went through Apple Sound Design,
00:04:03 ◼ ► They were great episodes, highly recommended, and they did mention the AirPods kind of sad battery noise,
00:05:11 ◼ ► And the bad part about using sounds is that you can't really copy and paste that into a search engine.
00:05:25 ◼ ► and very often it's good that you'll find these thousands of other people who are like,
00:05:33 ◼ ► But if there's only one light and they use that with like, oh, it's not blinking as fast as I --
00:05:40 ◼ ► If you have a get, it's where it's like, during setup, press and hold this button until the white light turns green,
00:05:55 ◼ ► No, it's very funny because some local friends of ours had some Internet issues with their Fios.
00:06:07 ◼ ► So we opened it up, and I had my friend take a picture of it, you know, so he could call Verizon and be like,
00:06:16 ◼ ► Meanwhile, he then Googled and found statuslights.com, which I just now, as we're recording, realized apparently that's based in Richmond.
00:06:24 ◼ ► And they have photos of all this different, like, computer equipment and telephony equipment and whatnot,
00:06:31 ◼ ► and they show exactly what lights should probably be lit up and what each of the statuslights means.
00:06:41 ◼ ► I see this list of vendors on statuslights.com, and Apple is notably absent from the A section.
00:06:49 ◼ ► But anyways, I would just love if somebody could please point me to the thing that I should probably be able to Google on my own and apparently could not,
00:07:05 ◼ ► I can't remember if I ever talked about it on the show earlier, but the Sound of Apple 1.0 and the Sound of Apple 2.0,
00:07:11 ◼ ► which are the 20,000 hertz episodes from a couple of months back, maybe a few months back now,
00:07:20 ◼ ► However, even if you're not into it in general, anyone who enjoys this show would absolutely enjoy those two episodes,
00:07:33 ◼ ► And Rivian noises, by the way, is what I mean. Like the noises that Rivian makes inside the cockpit.
00:07:39 ◼ ► Yeah, that was one where they're like, "Well, we take this raindrop and then we distort it like crazy in these 10 different ways,
00:07:47 ◼ ► Alright, let's do some follow-up. The Gas Car Review post that we've been talking about for the last couple of weeks,
00:07:54 ◼ ► this started in overtime, or in the bootleg, a couple of weeks ago, then we did some follow-up last week.
00:08:00 ◼ ► We thought we found the actual link that Marco was talking about, and it turns out we didn't, but now we have.
00:08:07 ◼ ► So Kay writes, "Is this the Gas Car Review Marco was trying to find? It's the one I remembered,
00:08:12 ◼ ► and shout out to Kagi for making it pretty easy to find when searching for 'funny review of gas car.'"
00:08:17 ◼ ► And this is jeff.grier.fm, and it's a gasoline car review, which is a lot less looking down the nose than the one that we thought was the right one for a brief minute last week.
00:08:26 ◼ ► To explain what we mean is a humorous review of a gasoline engine car, as if it had been reviewed by someone who'd never seen one,
00:08:33 ◼ ► to highlight how there are lots of weird things about gas cars that we don't think about because we're used to them as "normal,"
00:08:40 ◼ ► and every review of an electric car is like, "Can you believe this electric car? Let me tell you about it!"
00:08:44 ◼ ► So that's the conceit, and there's just so many of these posts. This is apparently the one Marco was thinking of,
00:08:50 ◼ ► but there are so many more people keep sending to us. It's not just the same posts sent over and over again in different places,
00:08:59 ◼ ► Yeah, and I like this one the best, in part because I think honestly it's better written than the others.
00:09:03 ◼ ► Also, I think the whole arrangement of it around comparing electric cars to an old Miata,
00:09:09 ◼ ► I think is just kind of charming and fun, especially because I used to be able to borrow an old Miata sometimes and drive it,
00:09:15 ◼ ► and that's what I learned to stick on, so I kind of have some fondness for that vehicle.
00:09:18 ◼ ► But anyway, this I think was the better one, and this was indeed the one I was thinking of, so thank you people for finding it.
00:09:25 ◼ ► Alright, with regard to Marco's lost MacBook Air, first of all, Marco, have you found it?
00:09:30 ◼ ► I did indeed find it. It was in a tote bag on a coat hook behind three coats in the closet.
00:09:38 ◼ ► The way I found it was I first went to Backblaze, because I said I couldn't see it in Find My,
00:09:48 ◼ ► Anyway, so I went to Backblaze, because I think Backblaze has some kind of finding functionality,
00:09:53 ◼ ► and I hadn't apparently enabled, they have like a whole map functionality where you can actually locate your computer if you enable location services.
00:09:59 ◼ ► I hadn't done that, but it did tell me the last IP address that it backed up from was my house IP address,
00:10:07 ◼ ► and it said that the last backup was basically while I was, it was like a day or two before, while I was gone still.
00:10:18 ◼ ► So I basically just exhausted every possibility. I searched everywhere, upstairs, downstairs, kitchen, I even looked in the garage.
00:10:30 ◼ ► I looked everywhere, but yeah, after about two days, I found it and still had 5% battery life left.
00:10:36 ◼ ► Oh, well look at that. But yeah, it turns out you can use Find My to ping or make a sound on a laptop, which is good to know,
00:10:44 ◼ ► Yeah, and if you want a backup locating option for your laptop, maybe go to Backblaze and enable that map functionality.
00:10:50 ◼ ► Alright, with regard to iOS 18 photos, we mostly got agreement from feedback, and this is not a vote, it's fine if you agree or disagree.
00:10:59 ◼ ► I'm just saying, you know, the people who decided to share with us, I think mostly agreed with our assessment.
00:11:03 ◼ ► But Tim Luft writes, "I prefer the new Photos app. I really do think it's an improvement once you dial in your setup.
00:11:09 ◼ ► Pinned collections are one of my favorites as they add a section at the bottom of the edit page called 'Any Collection or Album,'
00:11:18 ◼ ► Also, Jon can rearrange his albums by opening it into the list view of albums, then tapping and holding on the album to move it up and down the list.
00:11:29 ◼ ► I would never have discovered this for multiple reasons. So first of all, the convention for reordering things on iOS is either it looks like a thing that you can reorder,
00:11:36 ◼ ► or that you can go into that mode where it puts the little grippers on them, you know, the three little lines, right?
00:11:40 ◼ ► This does not have that. It's a totally, like, unique view that has a bunch of rounded recs separated by margins with, like, shadows underneath them.
00:11:47 ◼ ► And then, if you hold down on one of those things, it brings up a menu, like a long press menu, like an actual context menu, right?
00:11:55 ◼ ► But, like so many things that are elsewhere, like, if you hold down and the menu comes up, but you ignore the menu and you swipe,
00:12:02 ◼ ► then it, like, releases into your hand and you can move it around. But then, alright, so now you've got it, you're like, "Aha! This must be reorderable!"
00:12:10 ◼ ► As you drag it, if you drag it over another one of the rounded rectangles, it, like, highlights it, and if you release it there, it'll pop up a dialogue, at least as a confirmation, thank God.
00:12:18 ◼ ► It says, "Do you want to merge these albums?" You don't want that to happen. What you want to do is get it to release from its current position,
00:12:24 ◼ ► drag it, and get it to start displacing the other items so they scurry out of the way and leave an empty spot, right?
00:12:31 ◼ ► And so I went to this list and I found one of my albums that I wanted to be at the top, and it's way down on my list of, like, dozens of albums,
00:12:38 ◼ ► and I got it to lift up, and I started moving it, and I realized I didn't want it to highlight another thing, and so I got it to open a little gap in a space,
00:12:46 ◼ ► and then, alright, now I just need to drag it up to the top of the screen so it starts, you know, scrolling, paging down, and it starts paging and paging and paging,
00:12:52 ◼ ► and I get to the very top, and once I get to the very top with that thing in my hand, no little spaces are opening up for it.
00:12:58 ◼ ► Nowhere, I can't drag it anywhere, I'm still holding down on it, right? I'm dragging it, I'm dragging it over the top of things,
00:13:04 ◼ ► I want it to be the number one item, but I would settle for the number two or the number five or anything on the first page,
00:13:09 ◼ ► but no space will open up for it, so I give up, and, like, I have to find a safe place to release it, 'cause I hit the escape key on, like, a Mac OS,
00:13:16 ◼ ► I give up, drag it aside, let go, scroll down again, maybe if I go real slow, you know, like the gap, alright, get the gap to open up,
00:13:23 ◼ ► and now I just need to, like, push it up to the top, and the gap opens up, and it goes gap, gap, gap, gap, I'm not even gonna do it,
00:13:28 ◼ ► I'm just leaving my finger right here, I'm not gonna move it, gaps are opening up, and it gets to the very top, and lo and behold, the gaps are gone again.
00:13:34 ◼ ► And I tried to take, like, seven trips, seven partial trips, always being sure to drop it in one of the gaps before the gaps stop appearing.
00:13:41 ◼ ► Oh my God, what, is it the same people who worked on, like, Control Center and Rearranging Springboard make this interface?
00:13:47 ◼ ► Maddening, but anyway, I thank Tim, because I did eventually get through, by fighting with the system that I just described,
00:13:54 ◼ ► I did eventually get my top four or five albums to the top of that list that I had never thought was re-orderable,
00:14:00 ◼ ► never thought would have any effect on anything else, but now, in theory, every time I go to get the list of albums, those will be at the top,
00:14:06 ◼ ► so thank you, Tim, and no thank you to whoever made that interface in iOS 18 photos, because it's bad.
00:14:13 ◼ ► Excellent. Alright, we have a whole bunch of feedback with regard to the Magic Mouse, and, John, apparently you got a little bit confused with regard to side buttons,
00:14:24 ◼ ► Yeah, I said the Apology Mouse had side buttons, easy mistake to make, because the Apology Mouse has things that look for all the world,
00:14:30 ◼ ► like the side buttons that would eventually appear on the Mighty Mouse, but they are not in fact buttons.
00:14:34 ◼ ► Someone sent me a video of the Macworld keynote where the Apology Mouse was introduced, talking about it, and saying how Steve Jobs was on stage,
00:14:44 ◼ ► saying how everyone hated the Hockey Puck Mouse or whatever, and I said, "I'm in the audience in that video."
00:14:49 ◼ ► Because I was there, I got the Apology Mouse for free, I think Apple did, very rarely, but one of the times they did it,
00:14:56 ◼ ► everyone who was in the Macworld keynote got a free Apple Mouse, can you imagine, a free Apple Mouse.
00:15:01 ◼ ► The other thing, by the way, remembering the old days of Steve Jobs, part of the presentation was, "Here's our new mouse, people didn't like Hockey Puck, here's our new mouse, we think it's a great mouse."
00:15:12 ◼ ► And it's standard on every Mac that we sell. Remember the old days when Steve Jobs was like, "As soon as you make a new thing, the old thing is dead to me."
00:15:18 ◼ ► Right? Just like, "Forget it, the old ones don't exist, and now Tim Cook's like Lightning Accessories, yeah, we'll keep selling them forever."
00:15:25 ◼ ► Anyway, my apology for getting the side buttons on the Apology Mouse wrong, apparently it didn't have them, but the Mighty Mouse did.
00:15:32 ◼ ► I'm glad that we got that resolved. And speaking of getting things resolved, MKBHD's interview with Tim Cook, which all three of us were casting about, trying to remember the exact circumstance of it.
00:15:45 ◼ ► Yeah, so as we established on the show, it was WWDC 2024, but I didn't remember the exact context, so I watched the video again. Here was the context. It was a blind ranking, which I didn't know what it was until I saw this video and then forgot and then saw the video again and was reminded.
00:15:59 ◼ ► A blind ranking is where the interviewer tells the interviewee, "I'm gonna list the top five things here, and you have to rank them, but you don't know what the next ones are gonna be."
00:16:10 ◼ ► So if you're ranking your favorite foods, and I said tomatoes, you don't know if my next one's gonna be chocolate or prunes. So what do you rank tomatoes? It's a blind ranking. If you rank it, you're number one. What if something comes along that's better?
00:16:21 ◼ ► It's a fun way to try to get your true feelings about something and have a fun game where you never know what the next item's gonna be and you may regret your earlier ranking.
00:16:32 ◼ ► So MKBHD is saying to Tim Cook, "I'm gonna rank these," and Tim Cook's like, "Is this supposed to be my top five?" And Marquez is like, "Oh, it's just a top five." Anyway, he does blind ranking of a bunch of things. He lists a bunch of items.
00:16:43 ◼ ► Eventually, one of the items he lists, he says, "The Magic Mouse." That's it. He's just like, the first one is, you know, I forget what the products were, but it's like, "This product, that product," and then he says, "The Magic Mouse."
00:16:53 ◼ ► And he doesn't say it in a snarky way or anything, but it really looks like a total self-own by Tim Cook, because first of all, Tim Cook essentially, at the first item, refuses to rank them.
00:17:06 ◼ ► He won't give them numbers. You're supposed to say, "Okay, you know, apples is my number two," and then the next one they say, "Chocolate. Ooh, that's my number one," and then they say something like, "Better than..."
00:17:15 ◼ ► He doesn't give numbers. He says, "I'm not gonna rank them." So Tim Cook just refuses to play the game, which, fine, whatever. Media training, you don't have to answer the person's question.
00:17:24 ◼ ► Yeah, he does compare them to his children. But when they get to the Magic Mouse, he could have just said something, anything about it, but he goes, "The Magic Mouse."
00:17:34 ◼ ► And he's like, "You know, do we make a mouse?" And then he says something really awkward, like it was such an incredible moment. Like, no. No, Tim, it was not an incredible moment, and you don't remember when it was introduced, and nobody does, because it's just the Magic Mouse.
00:17:46 ◼ ► But anyway, I stick to what I said last week. I don't think Marquez was coming out and saying, "Hey, Tim Cook, everyone hates the Magic Mouse," but Tim Cook's reaction to it made it clear that he was not prepared for this question.
00:18:00 ◼ ► So we'll put a link in the show notes to the video with a timestamp, as we did last week, and then we'll also put a link to a very editorialized YouTube short made by the MKBHD channel folks that makes it seem like, "Does the 10,000 years later thing from SpongeBob or whatever?"
00:18:15 ◼ ► to make it seem like Tim Cook was bowled over. But if you watch the actual video, they're just playing the blind ranking game, Tim Cook is refusing to do it, and they get to one of the items, and I think the only thing Marquez says is, "The Magic Mouse."
00:18:29 ◼ ► And then Tim Cook self-destructs. So that's the context. You can take a look at it. I think the editorialized short is a little bit overdramatic, but it is one of the rare cases where Tim seemed flummoxed by not even a question, by just, "I'm listing items for the Magic Mouse."
00:18:44 ◼ ► "I'm listing items in this blind ranking game, and the next one I'm listing is a proper noun that is the name of one of your products. Go."
00:18:50 ◼ ► Well, I do think that toward the end, it was a very short segment, but toward the end of this 35 seconds of awkward, Tim starts talking about how they really had to work on, I think, the ergonomics or something like that.
00:19:02 ◼ ► And Marquez is like, "The Mighty Mouse." You know, he's kind of saying to himself in so many words, "You're talking about the ergonomics of the friggin' Mighty Mouse?"
00:19:14 ◼ ► He's the Magic Mouse. He's just trying to think of something. Tim is just trying to think of something to say. Like, it's so clear. He's like, "What can I say about this that is Tim Cook approved?"
00:19:30 ◼ ► Oh, my word. It was very funny. We also didn't touch on the most ridiculous of the most recent mouse rumors. This is from MacRumors, late, late, late last year.
00:19:40 ◼ ► A report from Korean leaker YEUX1222 this morning suggested that Apple has created a prototype Magic Mouse that includes a mix of touch, voice controls, and hand gestures.
00:19:51 ◼ ► Mark Gurman says, "Voice control in the new Magic Mouse I wrote about this month makes sense in light of AI and the fact that Apple is on a decade-plus cycle.
00:20:01 ◼ ► From what I've heard, big focus is ergonomics and gestures and a relocated USB-C port. I'd expect a new keyboard too."
00:20:08 ◼ ► Coming back to MacRumors, Apple reportedly plans to release a new Magic Mouse alongside the OLED M6 MacBook Pro in 2026.
00:20:16 ◼ ► So Gurman says a lot of things, and this is just a real winner, like, that the Voice Rumors make sense in light of AI? No, they don't. They don't make sense.
00:20:31 ◼ ► Well, before you get to the theory, I want to talk about this Logitech thing that was in the notes before, I think it was before we had overtime, but it was in the notes and it didn't make it to the show ever.
00:20:39 ◼ ► But it was in there for a long time because Logitech, the mouse maker, came out with an update to their mouse driver that incorporated ChatGPT into their mouse driver.
00:20:50 ◼ ► So you could, like, use the mouse and map a button on your mouse to, like, it would open up a thing and then you could, I forget if you could speak a ChatGPT query or you typed it, but the point was they added LOM ChatGPT integration to their mouse driver.
00:21:03 ◼ ► That's immediately what I thought of when I thought of rumors that the Magic Mouse is going to include voice controls. All right, so go ahead, Marco.
00:21:17 ◼ ► Now, first of all, the report from the leaker says they've created a prototype that does this.
00:21:30 ◼ ► The people who buy mice are generally using them either with desktops that have built-in microphones or maybe a laptop.
00:21:45 ◼ ► Okay, so if Apple is leaning very heavily into voice control to command your computer to do things, microphones are very cheap hardware-wise.
00:21:57 ◼ ► So maybe, because it also mentions the new keyboard, maybe they're just going to put a microphone in the new keyboard and a microphone in the new mouse and a microphone in a new trackpad.
00:22:07 ◼ ► And that way, whatever your setup is, if it includes any Apple peripherals, the computer can always hear you tell it a voice command.
00:22:15 ◼ ► Because that way, even if you have a closed laptop docked to a monitor that does not contain a microphone, one of your peripherals would contain a microphone.
00:22:32 ◼ ► And also, keep in mind, if they indeed have raised up the profile very slightly to accommodate a USB port somewhere on the front, then maybe they could put it next to that.
00:22:50 ◼ ► I think it's just like, give one more input to Siri, in the new AI version of Siri that might someday be out and might be good and might work.
00:23:04 ◼ ► Give one more input. And that way, we will hear you. Or maybe we'll hear you a little bit better.
00:23:08 ◼ ► Maybe we can hear you if you talk a little bit quieter, in case you're in an office situation and you don't want to be yelling all the time.
00:23:15 ◼ ► You could pick the mouse up and hold it to your mouth and you might say, perhaps in the sky.
00:23:35 ◼ ► Now I'm so mad at you because I'm getting no gold stars from you for thinking of the exact same reference.
00:23:46 ◼ ► Again, imagine if you're in an environment where you don't want to be talking very loudly.
00:23:51 ◼ ► If you pick it up to your mouth and the sheer act of picking it up triggers the microphone.
00:24:39 ◼ ► I'd expect a new mouse to replace that with two or three Taptic engines to provide clicking,
00:24:47 ◼ ► I think this is a terrible idea, but I also think Mike is very right that it is perfectly in keeping with the Apple hardware design ethos.
00:24:55 ◼ ► I think it's a terrible idea just because it'll be draining your battery for no reason because you just do so much clicking.
00:24:59 ◼ ► I think it's a terrible idea because I think you would find it annoying, and I also think it's totally something Apple would do.
00:25:11 ◼ ► I feel like weight on the mouse is more important because you're actually moving it. The trackpad doesn't go anywhere.
00:25:19 ◼ ► On the trackpads, it makes some sense because it's such a limited space, and not having it move has space benefits.
00:25:28 ◼ ► And on the trackpad, too, you can click anywhere on the trackpad, and it feels about the same, which is a huge area.
00:25:35 ◼ ► So to have that, like in the olden days when the trackpads were big, they called them diving boards or levers.
00:25:43 ◼ ► Yeah, you hinged on the top, you click it on the bottom generally with your thumb, and that felt good.
00:25:59 ◼ ► But anyway, so the mouse, though, you're always clicking the mouse in a reasonably short area, and it's the same small area.
00:26:07 ◼ ► So I don't think that this is solving a problem in the mouse, and there would be the downsides, as you mentioned.
00:26:12 ◼ ► It hasn't stopped Apple before. I also don't think it's solving a problem, but Apple loves Taptic Engines.
00:26:17 ◼ ► Also, I've used these mice for a very long time. I've never had the button go bad. Like, never.
00:26:31 ◼ ► That's true, too. I don't know. And then we got feedback from Calamity Jan, who writes,
00:26:37 ◼ ► "If Apple makes the mouse charge wirelessly, another reason to buy a MagSafe puck, they could make it symmetrical under rotation,
00:26:46 ◼ ► See the Apple Watch. You could wear it on either wrist and orient it with the crown facing in or out."
00:26:52 ◼ ► I mean, there's a lot of terrible ideas, and the question is, is this a terrible idea that Apple would find attractive?
00:26:58 ◼ ► I think no on this one, because I think it wouldn't be attractive enough to be symmetrical under rotation.
00:27:03 ◼ ► I think they just want actual vertical symmetry, period, not symmetrical under rotation.
00:27:12 ◼ ► Obviously, they're just putting it on your MagSafe puck. People suggested they could work with the watch charger.
00:27:17 ◼ ► They're obviously charging mouse pads that lots of vendors have, although I think Apple thinks mouse pads are gauche, let's say.
00:27:25 ◼ ► In fact, in the Steve Jobs keynote with the Apology Mouse, he's like, "And it's the first optical mouse that Apple has made.
00:27:31 ◼ ► That means you don't even need to use mouse pads." I don't think Steve Jobs likes mouse pads either.
00:27:47 ◼ ► It doesn't solve it because all that does is give you another reason you can't use the mouse while it's charging, but now it charges more slowly.
00:27:59 ◼ ► Like you said with the voice thing, we're just trying to think, "What will Apple do?" Not necessarily, "Is this a good idea?"
00:28:06 ◼ ► Alright, Coran J. writes, "The Logitech MX Anywhere is a symmetrical, low-ish profile and way more comfortable than the Magic Mouse."
00:28:20 ◼ ► I think it's still too ugly for Apple. I agree, low profile, it is symmetrical, also too ugly.
00:28:29 ◼ ► Wild Grain is the first baked from frozen subscription box for artisanal breads, pastries, and pastas.
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00:28:47 ◼ ► Best of all, they take the hassle out of baking since all the items bake from frozen in 25 minutes or less with no mess and no cleanup.
00:28:53 ◼ ► So they sent me a whole pile of stuff, some pastas, some breads, and they also sent apple cider donuts.
00:29:09 ◼ ► Additionally, with dinner tonight, we had their sourdough loaf, and I gotta tell you, this thing was delicious.
00:29:16 ◼ ► It was great, crunchy, crispy outside. You know what I'm gonna do? I'm not even kidding.
00:29:20 ◼ ► I'm gonna squeeze the loaf right next to the microphone, and you're gonna be able to hear the crunch of the exterior of the sourdough loaf, of the crust of the sourdough loaf.
00:29:32 ◼ ► In fact, tonight, this is the honest truth. After having had the sourdough loaf, Declan said to us, "You know what? Can we have those tear-apart cranberry pecan rolls with breakfast tomorrow?
00:29:44 ◼ ► So, if you're ready to bring all of your favorite carbs right to your doorstep, and you know I am, be sure to check out Wild Green so you can begin building your own box of artisanal breads, pastas, and pastries.
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00:30:07 ◼ ► You heard me. Free croissants in every box, and $30 off your first box, when you go to wildgrain.com/atp. That's W-I-L-D-G-R-A-I-N dot com slash ATP, or you can use promo code ATP at checkout.
00:30:26 ◼ ► We got some very fascinating feedback with regard to Apple's Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips.
00:30:31 ◼ ► We were talking last episode, maybe the one before, about Apple potentially making their own chips for Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
00:30:36 ◼ ► And Ian Williamson points out, "Apple already makes the Wi-Fi and Bluetooth silicon in the Apple Watch."
00:30:44 ◼ ► The Apple W2 used in the Apple Watch series 3 is integrated into the Apple S3 SIP system in package.
00:30:52 ◼ ► Apple claimed the chip makes Wi-Fi 85% faster and allows Bluetooth and Wi-Fi to use half the power of the W1 implementation.
00:31:05 ◼ ► And then additionally, Winnie Lewis writes, "To aid John in developing excitement for Apple designed Wi-Fi and Bluetooth chips, I've created this crackpot theory.
00:31:12 ◼ ► Apple made radio chips are the first step toward an Apple mesh Wi-Fi system. No way, but that's awesome."
00:31:18 ◼ ► Yeah, so this is about Marco saying, you know, if Apple made their own chips, it could have big power advantage to the watch.
00:31:37 ◼ ► So the H1 chip that we talked about on the show is their chip for handling wireless stuff inside AirPods,
00:31:43 ◼ ► and it has special sauce that we think makes them better than just plain old Bluetooth. That was one of the examples we used.
00:31:49 ◼ ► You should have remembered that along with the H1, there's also the W1, W2, and W3 for the watch.
00:31:55 ◼ ► But apparently on the Max, they're still using Broadcom chips, so this is just continuing along the path they've already started down.
00:32:03 ◼ ► As for making it more likely to have a wet mesh system, there's just so much more to a Wi-Fi mesh system than the wireless chips.
00:32:09 ◼ ► We all kind of wish that Apple would go back into that business, but I'm still waiting to hear those rumors, and so far I haven't heard anything.
00:32:17 ◼ ► All right, in our final piece of follow-up for this week, James Andrews writes, "One of the coolest LoRa projects."
00:32:23 ◼ ► If you recall, LoRa is long-range. It's what powers the Yolink stuff that Jon brought to the show and has now ruined my life because I want all of it.
00:32:30 ◼ ► Anyways, James writes, "One of the coolest LoRa projects is Meshtastic. It's more of a RadioHam-esque thing, but it's super cool in a 'fun' time sink."
00:32:40 ◼ ► And this is described from Meshtastic.org as, "Meshtastic is an open-source off-grid decentralized mesh network built to run on affordable low-power devices."
00:32:50 ◼ ► I actually exchanged a couple of emails with James about this, or maybe it was Mastodon Post, it doesn't matter.
00:32:55 ◼ ► Anyways, James was saying that what you basically do is have a Bluetooth-powered LoRa receiver that works with Meshtastic,
00:33:03 ◼ ► and that allows you to basically send text messages and potentially other data back and forth to other people on the mesh network.
00:33:10 ◼ ► This is the sort of thing that I would probably spend way too much time messing with, so I don't ever want to think about it again.
00:33:16 ◼ ► All right, let's do our first real topic, and Marco, I think you and I can buzz off from here on out, because we're going to talk CES 2025.
00:33:26 ◼ ► Nope, sure aren't, and I really don't care that much about TVs. They're certainly not in the way that you do, Jon, so take it away and wake me up when you're ready.
00:33:35 ◼ ► Well, you should care a little bit, because a lot of this TV tech eventually comes to computers, and there is some computer tie-ins, but yeah, a lot of this is about TVs.
00:33:42 ◼ ► CES is the time of the year when television manufacturers show their new TVs for the year, but then don't tell you enough about them.
00:33:51 ◼ ► And certainly don't tell them for sale almost ever, although TCL did something a little different this year.
00:33:56 ◼ ► Anyway, just to set the frame here, tons of TVs are announced at CES. I only care about a small subset of them.
00:34:05 ◼ ► I care about the "best TVs," the ones with the best picture quality, the ones that most accurately reproduce the picture of how it's supposed to look according to the people who made the TV show or movie.
00:34:19 ◼ ► Because they make the thing in a certain way, the video is supposed to look this way, I want the TV to show it the way they made it, and I want it to do the best job possible.
00:34:28 ◼ ► So I only care about the top highest end TVs. On that front, Sony has decided for the past few years they're going to be like Apple and say, "We're not even going to show at CES."
00:34:38 ◼ ► Everyone else can announce their TVs. We're going to have a separate event later in the year just for Sony so we get all the attention and we don't have to compete with all your other TV announcements.
00:34:46 ◼ ► And so far that's been working okay for Sony because Sony is the big dog and so that's what they're doing. Sony was at CES, Sony was showing other stuff at CES, but not TVs.
00:34:57 ◼ ► Samsung, maker of the Quantum Dot OLED screen, the best available screen technology for televisions, has, predictably, a new generation of their QD OLED screen.
00:35:09 ◼ ► I'll put some links in the show notes to videos that will tell you about it and the main thing that OLEDs, including QD OLED, have been doing over the past several years is trying to get brighter.
00:35:21 ◼ ► Because OLEDs in general are the best screen technology because every single pixel is individually controlled and so you don't have to worry about backlight regions bleeding through and dynamically controlling them.
00:35:32 ◼ ► It's just individual pixels, you turn them on and off, when they're off they're totally off, when they're on they're on. One pixel doesn't affect the ones next to it, there's no blooming.
00:35:40 ◼ ► Like, it's the best technology. But the one weakness it has, if you can call it that, is it can't get super duper bright.
00:35:47 ◼ ► Of course the TVs that can get super duper bright that aren't OLED have all the problems with that bright backlight bleeding through surrounding pixels and doing all such other stuff.
00:35:54 ◼ ► Anyway, people who want to get the very best TV but also want to watch it with bright sunlight coming through the windows and hitting the TV screens, they're trying to help you out.
00:36:09 ◼ ► They're given in terms of how big a region of the screen is lit up because if you light up the whole screen, you can't make it as bright as if you light up a small percentage of the screen due to power and heat reasons.
00:36:23 ◼ ► So the way they describe that is, an n percent window. So at a 3 percent window, meaning there's a rectangle in the middle of the TV that is 3 percent the size of the entire screen, the new QD OLED gets to 4,000 nits.
00:36:42 ◼ ► And that may be shocking to you, but that is how OLEDs work. 4,000 nits at a 3 percent window, 2,000 at a 10 percent full field, 440.
00:37:01 ◼ ► And you may be thinking, I think that may actually be true of Apple's screens as well, like their laptop screens, but they say you can go to 600 nits, but I wonder if you make the entire screen white on your MacBook Pro if it is 600 nits, or if it only counts as a percentage.
00:37:16 ◼ ► It probably does because they're not OLEDs. But anyway, even though these numbers don't sound impressive, they're way better than last year.
00:37:27 ◼ ► They also offer the S95F in an 83 inch size, but beware, even though Samsung is being annoying like Apple, they won't tell you.
00:37:35 ◼ ► The 83 inch size does not use a QD OLED panel. They can't make it that big yet. The biggest one is still 77.
00:37:41 ◼ ► But it's the same product. If you buy these sizes, you get a QD OLED. If you buy the biggest size, you don't.
00:37:46 ◼ ► And Samsung will not tell you that, but people just put their phones up to the screen and take a picture of it and go, "Yep, that's not a QD OLED." So, beware of that.
00:37:53 ◼ ► And also there's a new version of Samsung's anti-reflective coating, which is very controversial because some people really like it because they insist on watching their televisions with giant bright lights on the screen.
00:38:02 ◼ ► And other people hate it because the anti-glare coating diffuses light, and so if you have any light falling on it, it sort of makes it hazy and black and makes the blacks not really black.
00:38:13 ◼ ► Hazy and gray, rather, makes the blacks not true black, and it's one of the reasons you're getting an OLED.
00:38:17 ◼ ► Anyway, I don't like Samsung TVs, but it's important to talk about them because they make the QD OLED.
00:38:22 ◼ ► They're the only manufacturer in the entire world that makes QD OLED screens, and QD OLED screens are the best OLED screens for reasons we'll get into in a second.
00:38:30 ◼ ► So, next up is LG, the biggest OLED TV maker. LG had a technology that they called MLA, microlens array, that we talked about on past episodes where they put literally thousands of lenses on each pixel.
00:38:42 ◼ ► Not on the screen. On each pixel has thousands of microlens. When they say microlens array, they mean microlens.
00:38:49 ◼ ► And they did that to try to make their screens have a better viewing angle because one of the advantages that QD OLED have is an amazingly good viewing angle because the color things are really close to you and the polarizer is behind them.
00:38:59 ◼ ► Whereas in traditional LEDs, it's reversed. But the main advantage QD OLED has over non-QD OLED is non-QD OLEDs like LGs are WRGB panels.
00:39:10 ◼ ► They have a red, green, and a blue subpixel, and then a massive white subpixel next to it.
00:39:14 ◼ ► And they use that to achieve good brightness, but they're mixing white with the red, the green, and the blue.
00:39:19 ◼ ► And as you can imagine, it washes out color. So, QD OLED screens have the best viewing angles, the best color volume they can make the most different colors, and the best color brightness.
00:39:28 ◼ ► They just have RGB. Just plain old RGB, and they just make the R, the G, and the B brighter to make the screen brighter.
00:39:38 ◼ ► So, QD OLED, still the king, but LG is trying to catch up and they were using the microlens array last year, and I think the year before that.
00:39:45 ◼ ► This year, they have dropped the microlens array from their flagship television. So how are they going to make it as bright to try to compete with the QD OLEDs?
00:39:52 ◼ ► They did it by using our old friend from the iPad, Tandem OLED, which still I don't have a really great explanation for other than there's an additional light emitting layer in the OLED stack.
00:40:03 ◼ ► They just add one more thing that emits light and somehow the other thing that emits light shines through.
00:40:08 ◼ ► Anyway, multiple layers, Tandem OLED, just like on the iPad. I think LG makes the Tandem OLED for the iPad. I forget. We've talked about it in past shows and I've already forgotten.
00:40:17 ◼ ► But anyway, keep an eye on Tandem OLED because they got rid of MLA and one of the disadvantages of MLA is it lights the screen at an angle, it hits those microlens and scatters and again gives like a gray haze across the screen, which you don't want.
00:40:30 ◼ ► It's messing up your black levels. So they got rid of MLA, brought in Tandem OLED. Still WRGB, still has a white sub pixel, still doesn't have the same color volume as QD OLED, but LG is trying to do what they do.
00:40:42 ◼ ► They don't know how to make QD OLED, only Samsung does. And by the way, Samsung sells these screens to Sony, which is why Sony is able to make great TVs, but we don't know what they're doing this year.
00:40:51 ◼ ► So here are the specs for LG's flagship. 3% window is 3700 nits, 10% is 2400 nits and full field is 308. So it is not as good as QD OLED. It's a little bit better than the 10% window. These are estimates. These are not measurements, these are estimates.
00:41:05 ◼ ► And then the previous ones were claims from Samsung. So we'll see when they review the TVs. But LG is hanging in there. It is interesting to see they ditched to MLA and it's interesting to see the resurgence of Tandem OLED.
00:41:16 ◼ ► I think the Tandem OLEDs in the iPad are just RGB and not WRGB. So keep an eye out for Apple/Mac caliber screens from both of these technologies.
00:41:31 ◼ ► One of the advances in QD OLED this year was they were bragging about is, now we can make QD OLEDs smaller, which is a thing to brag about because you've got to make the subpixels smaller.
00:41:40 ◼ ► And so they were showing a 4K 27 inch QD OLED, which is not right for us Mac folks. We want it to be 5K at 27 inch. But then they had right next to it, coming soon, 5K QD OLED, 27 inch.
00:41:57 ◼ ► It's not an announced product, but we're getting close. That is like, if you can get a QD OLED 27 inch 5K screen, that would be amazing. And of course Apple will ship it 15 years from now.
00:42:12 ◼ ► So keep an eye on that. And as for the LG panel that dropped the micro-lens array, LG was pulling a Samsung and saying we're not going to tell you what we're doing. They didn't stop them from taking their phones and holding it up to the screen and being like, take a picture of the subpixels.
00:42:30 ◼ ► They didn't stop them from doing that, but LG refused to say anything. Panasonic on the other hand said, oh totally, we'll tell you all about our screen. We call it the primary RGB tandem OLED panel. Everyone's got different branding for this, but the fact is Panasonic buys their screens from LG.
00:42:42 ◼ ► Everybody knows they do. And Panasonic is branding their LG OLED as primary RGB tandem OLED, which I don't know, whatever. They all make up their own marketing names. But Samsung was out of the TV game in the US for years. They came back last year with two new TVs. Now they have three. Their top tier one is the Z95B. It uses this tandem OLED from LG. Looks really good.
00:43:03 ◼ ► Unfortunately, Panasonic uses the Fire TV software stack that everyone hates, which is a bummer. One of the things they were advertising on their TV was that it had an improved chimney cooling system. It takes cool air in from the bottom and sends it out the top.
00:43:17 ◼ ► Again, heat, power levels. They're trying to work on that, but it's notable that Samsung is going to come back.
00:43:23 ◼ ► Second to last on TVs, predictably, everyone's adding more annoying AI stuff to their TVs. To the point where there's Microsoft co-pilot integrations. Which, okay, I guess. It's basically like, you can access the co-pilot web app through the TV.
00:43:39 ◼ ► LG has an entire AI section on its TVs, including an AI remote. One of the controls they use is they remove the input button from the remote in place of some stupid AI thing that you have to hold down and then it will bring up the input panel.
00:43:55 ◼ ► They have AI upscaling, AI auto HDR, AI remastering, AI adaptive, everything is AI. They will literally let you talk to voice assistants and LLMs through your television, whatever. It's just making everyone feel like they need to do it, but none of these things make TVs better.
00:44:12 ◼ ► And finally, big TVs are big. That's been the trend for the past few years. Everyone wants to come and say, "Forget about those TVs that look good. Ours is really big!" And they would just be getting bigger and bigger.
00:44:26 ◼ ► Even Samsung has its cheat 83 inch flagship TV that's not even a QD OLED. TCL last year was showing off a 115 inch TV. Now TCL is saying, "Here's our 115 inch TV and it's the mid-range model." And they're not showing you what the top end one is.
00:44:43 ◼ ► So it's probably bigger than 115. I don't know where people live, but they fit these televisions. I don't know if you realize how big 115 inch television is. It's really big. So now that's not even their biggest size. What is it going to be? 130 inch? Soon you're not going to be able to get it in people's doors.
00:45:00 ◼ ► They don't roll up, but just FYI, they keep making these things bigger. Because they can't make them better. So if you can't make it better, just make it bigger and everyone loves big TVs.
00:45:13 ◼ ► That's all the TV talk. Just to keep up-to-date, the upshot is that QD OLED and LG are still duking it out. QD OLED still seems like it's on top. I hate Samsung's TVs, so I'm waiting to see what Sony does with that QD OLED panel. What Panasonic does with it is also going to be good, but I don't really like the Fire TV OS.
00:45:29 ◼ ► Not that I'm in the market for new TV. I'm just watching as a fan. But later in the year when Sony announces their new TV with the new QD OLED, that'll be interesting. It's also interesting because Sony this last year didn't even get the new version of the QD OLED from last year.
00:45:44 ◼ ► They just kept selling their TV from the year before and it was still the best TV you could buy. So they're just like, "We're sitting out a year. We don't need to bother."
00:45:51 ◼ ► I don't know if it's because Samsung wouldn't sell Sony the latest generation of QD OLED and they were keeping it for themselves. So I'm not sure how that relationship is shaking out, but I hope Sony is able to give Samsung enough money to get this new QD OLED panel.
00:46:05 ◼ ► I think they will because Samsung is this giant conglomerate where there's one part of it called Samsung Display that sells their displays and there's another part called Samsung Electronics that makes a TV.
00:46:17 ◼ ► And they're two different things. Samsung Display wants to sell displays to Sony because their profit and loss is how many displays did we sell. And Samsung TV totally does not want them to sell displays to Sony, but that's a different part of the company.
00:46:36 ◼ ► And coming back to computer stuff, LG has announced a computer display. It is called the Ultrafine 6K with Thunderbolt 5 support. And as is traditional with CES, they won't tell us anything you want to know about it.
00:46:53 ◼ ► Does it at least have the right density to be a Proteus Play XDR competitor? Is it like 6K at 32 inches?
00:47:08 ◼ ► So here's the reading from MacRumors. "Details are scant, you don't say, but we know that the LG Ultrafine monitor (and they get the model number) features a nano IPS black panel delivering a wide color gamut covering 99.5% of Adobe RGB and 98% of DCI-P3.
00:47:24 ◼ ► LG has not revealed the exact resolution. Another thing that is unclear is whether it's 60 hertz or 120 hertz, and the price has not been revealed."
00:47:31 ◼ ► So what do we know about this? It is 32 inch, the 6K is in the name, the specs of the panel make it seem like not quite as good as the XDR.
00:47:41 ◼ ► Every story about this mentions the monitor that we talked about in the last year, which is the Dell UltraSharp 32 inch 6K monitor, which is for sale and has actual specs at $2,500 bucks, 32 inch at 60 hertz, no HDR.
00:47:55 ◼ ► It is slightly higher res than the XDR, so it's not the same panel. It's 6144 by 3456 instead of the XDR 6016 by 3384, and it's 99% P3.
00:48:06 ◼ ► I'm assuming that the LG uses a panel like that, a 6144 panel, but who knows? LG's not telling us, but the density is probably in that ballpark, and it is 32 inches.
00:48:19 ◼ ► I don't know why they bother showing something at CES if they're not going to tell you, "Here's a monitor, here's a size, let me tell you how much of the color space it covers, but resolution? No, we can't tell you.
00:48:32 ◼ ► Refresh rate? No, we're not telling you that either." They never reveal the price, fine. Maybe they don't even know the price yet because it's not out yet, but this is the thing to keep an eye on.
00:48:40 ◼ ► The LG Ultrafine 5K was the ultra fine alternative to Apple's 27 inch monitors. Maybe the 6K will be as well.
00:48:49 ◼ ► One thing I can tell you about the 6K is it is not as homely as the 5K because they copied Apple more faithfully this time.
00:48:57 ◼ ► It looks like not quite as elegant XDR. It may be cheap and plastic-y, we'll find out, but I think it is more attractive.
00:49:06 ◼ ► Speaking of copying Apple, it's the end of an era because Dell is no longer making XPS computers.
00:49:14 ◼ ► This was, generally speaking, the good line of Dell computers since forever, basically.
00:49:20 ◼ ► Reading from Ars Technica, "Dell is killing the XPS branding that has become a mainstay for people seeking a sleek, respectable, well-priced PC.
00:49:27 ◼ ► This means that there won't be any more Dell XPS laptops or desktops. Dell is also killing its Latitude, Inspiron, and Precision branding it announced today."
00:49:34 ◼ ► Okay, I mean, I'm not really sure why that was necessary, but surely you've come up with something that's better, right Dell? Right? Right?
00:49:56 ◼ ► And by the way, before we move on from this, XPS, Latitude, Inspiron, I know those names despite never owning a Dell and never wanting to own a Dell.
00:50:05 ◼ ► So they are throwing away some substantial decades-long brand equity from XPS and Latitude and Inspiron and Precision I hadn't heard about.
00:50:13 ◼ ► But this is not like, "Oh, well, they have a new line of things and here are the names."
00:50:53 ◼ ► So Dell was apparently mocked at its own press event for copying Apple's naming convention.
00:51:07 ◼ ► Quote, "I'm wondering why you guys didn't choose something original because you essentially
00:51:19 ◼ ► Despite claiming it did this purely for simplicity and not to copy Apple, Dell actually managed
00:51:34 ◼ ► And then Engadget, and we'll link them as well, notes that things descend entirely into
00:51:41 ◼ ► Engadget writes, "Just try to read the names Dell Pro Max Micro and Dell Pro Max Mini without
00:51:48 ◼ ► And yes, you can expect these machines to have their own Plus and Premium sub-branding.
00:52:04 ◼ ► If you're copying Apple's naming, it's probably a bad idea because Apple's not great at naming.
00:52:09 ◼ ► They get away with it because their products are good and the names become associated with
00:52:26 ◼ ► I mean, people hate Inspiron, I can tell you that, because they were very crappy laptops.
00:52:41 ◼ ► Apparently people have been angry about Alienware for years because they will sell you an Alienware
00:52:53 ◼ ► Finally, Alienware is saying their new line of computers will accept standard components.
00:53:18 ◼ ► And then to somehow find a way to make it worse, not once over, but twice over, because
00:53:30 ◼ ► It's bad enough that you have, you know, like they kind of make the mistake of like, Apple
00:53:48 ◼ ► Extreme like, Apple has painted itself into a corner with its names, they're not great.
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00:55:59 ◼ ► a CES keynote announcing a $2,000 5090, $1,000 5080, a $750 5070 Ti and a $550 RTX 5070.
00:56:11 ◼ ► So when we had a question on AskATP, I think a few months ago, they were like, "Oh, the
00:56:41 ◼ ► But yeah, it'll be relatively, you know, not going to take huge amounts of power, but still
00:56:49 ◼ ► And B, it doesn't really matter if it competes with the 4090 in terms of bragging rights,
00:56:55 ◼ ► because by the time that chip is out, Nvidia will have replaced the 4090, which is already
00:57:17 ◼ ► Nvidia says the RTX 5090 will be two times faster than the RTX 4090 thanks to DLSS4 and
00:57:24 ◼ ► Jon, do you want to take a little pause and explain to me what the hell that means, please?
00:57:33 ◼ ► The RTX 5090 will have a total graphics power of 575 watts and a recommended PSU requirement
00:58:11 ◼ ► And the easiest way for me to do that is to hook my UPS up to it just for a few minutes,
00:58:16 ◼ ► you know, 10, 20 minutes, whatever, because my UPS has got three monitors, a MaxBook Pro,
00:58:23 ◼ ► you know, the Synology, the Eero router, all sorts of stuff hanging off of this, right?
00:58:35 ◼ ► Well, the battery pack will show you what the usage is, you know, how many watts you're
00:58:42 ◼ ► My entire desk setup, a six base Synology, three 5K monitors, two of which are the UltraFinds,
00:59:02 ◼ ► - Yeah, I mean, this is why like, you know, when we're talking about, when we're comparing
00:59:24 ◼ ► a standard US outlet at some point for these total PCs that are, you know, 'cause like,
00:59:42 ◼ ► really pushing boundaries here, you know, at some point, like gaming desktops are gonna
00:59:55 ◼ ► This is not made for power efficient PCs, portable, you know, anything laptop, anything
01:00:03 ◼ ► This is like, what is the highest level of performance we can get from a GPU at any cost,
01:00:18 ◼ ► You know, not just games, although games are a big one, but of course, you know, all the,
01:00:22 ◼ ► you know, AI stuff these days, like there's lots of applications for like, I don't care
01:01:06 ◼ ► Apple has sold many GPUs, one of which is in my computer right now for way more money than
01:01:20 ◼ ► Pricing wise, it's shocking to PC people, but we're like, oh, you can buy an eBay today,
01:01:26 ◼ ► a crappy GPU in an MPX module for an Intel Mac Pro that will cost you more than the 1590
01:01:54 ◼ ► This card, the reference design for this card and all the companies that have their, you
01:01:57 ◼ ► know, the Nvidia shows a reference design and then like Asus and Gigabyte and all these
01:02:01 ◼ ► other companies make their cards from, you know, like they're all selling basically the
01:02:08 ◼ ► The reference design has three giant fans, like, you know, I don't know, five inch fans,
01:03:09 ◼ ► It's like, guys, like get together on which direction you want the fans to be facing and
01:03:33 ◼ ► Anyway, gaming PCs and as for the AI thing, Apple, Nvidia makes dedicated AI cards that
01:03:54 ◼ ► And as Casey just said, they're claiming it's two times faster and they're talking about
01:04:13 ◼ ► multi-frame generation generating up to three additional frames per traditionally rendered
01:04:18 ◼ ► frame working in unison with the complex suite of DLSS technologies to multiply frame rates
01:04:40 ◼ ► Now if that just sounds like an alphabet soup, you may be thinking, all right, so Nvidia
01:04:54 ◼ ► What does it mean to have up to three additional frames per traditionally rendered frame and
01:05:10 ◼ ► So video games have to draw a picture on your screen and every 1/60th of a second or whatever,
01:05:54 ◼ ► Instead of asking the video card to draw every frame, how about we have the video card draw
01:05:58 ◼ ► a frame and then we ask the video card what it thinks the next frame would look like if
01:06:06 ◼ ► Based on the frames that had come before it, what do you think the next frame's probably
01:06:12 ◼ ► But can you just think about what it probably is going to look like based on the frames
01:06:33 ◼ ► And every company has their own version of this under a different alphabet soup acronym.
01:06:38 ◼ ► And yeah, they would do it based on the frames that had come before it and the pixels that
01:06:44 ◼ ► And the whole point is, if you can do this faster than you can actually render a frame,
01:06:55 ◼ ► then you get one "we made this up" frame for free, essentially, while your game is rendering
01:07:05 ◼ ► If you had a slower, older PC but it supported DLSS, you could say, "When I put this game
01:07:18 ◼ ► And there's a little bit of artifacting and sometimes like a little bit janky and every
01:07:21 ◼ ► version of DLSS gets a little bit better of being sort of temporally stable and not having
01:07:32 ◼ ► You can always just do the "traditionally rendered frame" way which is like, "I'll just
01:07:39 ◼ ► But if you have an older CPU or GPU and an older computer and you just want higher resolution,
01:07:46 ◼ ► The innovation this year with DLSS 4 is instead of looking at previous frames that the card
01:07:51 ◼ ► had rendered and the pixels that are surrounding the pixel you're thinking about for the next
01:08:12 ◼ ► So it's not just guessing what the next frame is going to look like based on the pixels
01:08:22 ◼ ► games so it has a better idea of what the pixels should be in this position in the next
01:08:33 ◼ ► So you get one "traditionally rendered frame" and then it can make three frames out of that
01:08:42 ◼ ► So that's why you can triple, quadruple, whatever your frame rate because you get one regular
01:08:52 ◼ ► your frame rates go up and it's not just based on the three or four dozen frames that came
01:09:17 ◼ ► Look at the one all the way on the left where it says "Far Cry 6" and it says "RT" which
01:09:38 ◼ ► but by the ray tracing components of the GPU and so this is not really a fair comparison.
01:09:43 ◼ ► I'm not saying that the 5090 is only like 10% faster than the 4090 but what I am saying
01:09:48 ◼ ► is that Nvidia's marketing materials are leaning heavily on the fact that the 5090 is really
01:09:59 ◼ ► This is an interesting turn of events where they're not content to brag about the actual
01:10:27 ◼ ► do 60 frames per second I believe so they already have to show it at half speed if it's
01:10:36 ◼ ► There are screens showing at CES and they're already out on the market that will do 500
01:10:45 ◼ ► The DLSS4 is pretty amazing and regular people probably won't be able to tell it just like
01:10:50 ◼ ► you're getting performance for free but just FYI they're doing it in a different way than
01:10:56 ◼ ► Yes, it is very much like you said, Marco, like motion smoothing where the show -- this
01:11:04 ◼ ► we'll just make up the in between frames and the TVs do a terrible job of this compared
01:11:13 ◼ ► DLSS4 is amazing but it is a little bit -- it's not shady, it's not misleading, it's interesting
01:11:29 ◼ ► say traditional brute force rendering also known as rendering but they are -- they should
01:11:45 ◼ ► They're manufacturing three frames for every one that actually gets rendered but that's
01:11:59 ◼ ► Eventually why not just have the card make up all the frames and not have the game render
01:12:04 ◼ ► I mean look, for whatever it's worth I think it's very impressive that the GPUs can make
01:12:15 ◼ ► And when you think about like how many milliseconds do they have to make up each frame, it's not
01:12:22 ◼ ► Well the good thing about doing the -- making up the frames is I'm pretty sure when they
01:12:27 ◼ ► make up the frames they're essentially working in a 2D world whereas rendering the frames
01:12:40 ◼ ► It's like you just need to make every pixel in this 4K image and I need you to make three
01:12:43 ◼ ► of them whereas rendering the flame for real is like hey there's 10 million polygons, 50
01:13:00 ◼ ► It is amazing that they can -- the thing that's amazing is that they can do it in a way that
01:13:05 ◼ ► Like how does it not just become a smeary, blurry, ridiculous mess and that is the magic
01:13:15 ◼ ► Honestly it is kind of impressive like you know if they're using any kind of -- you know
01:13:27 ◼ ► But to execute any kind of like reasonably modern AI model, even a small one, to execute
01:13:39 ◼ ► a GPU to render the rest of the game the rest of the time, that is a pretty impressive amount
01:13:48 ◼ ► That being said, you know, I don't know -- I mean I don't know anything about this so maybe
01:14:03 ◼ ► And it's very much like when like high-end audio files are like I run my DAC at 192 kilohertz
01:14:19 ◼ ► I don't know where that line is with refresh rates for monitors but I'm pretty sure gamers
01:14:25 ◼ ► Remember the thing that I had in my blog that shows the like responsiveness to drawing on
01:14:41 ◼ ► Now granted you're not drawing on the screen but like when you're moving the mouse or whatever
01:14:44 ◼ ► to like aim, because your input is influencing what's on the screen it is much more like
01:14:59 ◼ ► Like frame rate varies throughout the thing and they just want to make sure like to get
01:15:03 ◼ ► to make sure your minimum frame rate is in that good responsive threshold like scribbling
01:15:14 ◼ ► The other thing is that traditional LCD displays become smeary messes at these refresh rates
01:15:20 ◼ ► and they have to do all sorts of weird tricks to make that not happen that make the screen
01:15:23 ◼ ► uglier but OLED OLED response rate is insane right as you know from like the stuttery effect
01:15:46 ◼ ► it fully 100% works it does not become a blurry mess you don't have to compromise the image
01:15:57 ◼ ► all that other stuff G-Sync is Nvidia's technology for this so I think they're making some good
01:16:27 ◼ ► Reading from The Verge Nvidia announced that it's launching a personal AI computer supercomputer
01:16:34 ◼ ► The heart of Project Digits is the new GB10 Grace Blackwell Superchip which packs enough
01:16:38 ◼ ► processing power to run sophisticated AI models while being compact enough to fit on a desk
01:16:49 ◼ ► This desktop sized system can handle AI models with up to 200 billion parameters and has
01:16:59 ◼ ► Each Project Digit system comes equipped with 128 gigs of unified coherent memory and up
01:17:06 ◼ ► For even more demanding applications two Project Digit systems can be linked together to handle
01:17:10 ◼ ► models with up to 405 billion parameters, best model Llama 3.1 has 405 billion parameters.
01:17:23 ◼ ► one quadrillion AI calculations per second at FP4 precision which helps make the calculations
01:17:32 ◼ ► And the system features Nvidia's latest generation CUDA cores and fifth generation tensor cores
01:17:37 ◼ ► connected to an NVLink C2C to a GRACE CPU containing 20 power efficient ARM based cores.
01:17:44 ◼ ► So this is the idea behind this is so they're taking these things to note here first to
01:17:48 ◼ ► note that they have an ARM based CPU it's like a 20 core arm CPU that's probably pretty
01:17:58 ◼ ► Nvidia making ARM CPUs like just general purpose CPUs and then they stick with it one of their
01:18:18 ◼ ► So again they're measuring number of parameters 200 billion you can get 200 to 400 billion
01:18:36 ◼ ► where Nvidia is making all their money those are just so much bigger than these so much
01:18:39 ◼ ► more expensive but if you want to have something in your house that can run a reasonable AI
01:18:55 ◼ ► I don't know if there's a market for this product maybe people who are like doing experiments
01:19:00 ◼ ► with models and they think a 200 billion or 400 billion parameter model is something that
01:19:12 ◼ ► starting to release this type of product saying like yeah it's great that you can have computers
01:19:17 ◼ ► in the cloud that do all this stuff but usually we charge you money for using that if you
01:19:22 ◼ ► just want to have it quote unquote on-prem but not really because it's literally in your
01:19:29 ◼ ► desk and actually it's not that big actually it's just like a little Mac Mini and you can
01:19:32 ◼ ► just have it sitting there headless and do your you know model development on this thing
01:19:43 ◼ ► do inference on them as in you can put the model on there run it and then ask it questions
01:19:48 ◼ ► I don't think they mean that you would use this to train because training costs hundreds
01:19:51 ◼ ► of millions of dollars and huge data centers and long periods of time but still worth noting
01:19:57 ◼ ► two things one and video is continuing to make hardware that's starting to look a little
01:20:01 ◼ ► bit more PC like and to the idea that there's a thing you could have in your house to do
01:20:21 ◼ ► will be closer and it will run on hardware you control could potentially be more private
01:20:34 ◼ ► notebook fake granite thing going on interesting I don't know like to me it's kind of like
01:20:41 ◼ ► the Cybertruck it's like I don't think that's attractive but I'm glad people are trying
01:20:49 ◼ ► so hey good for them I can't tell even what they're going for but anyway yeah and so the
01:21:03 ◼ ► right so in videos Jensen Huang hints it plans for its own desktop GPS CPU excuse me CPU
01:21:10 ◼ ► it's long been rumored reading from the verge that in video is planning to break into the
01:21:13 ◼ ► consumer CPU market in 2025 and we may have already had our first look at its new processor
01:21:19 ◼ ► on Monday at CES the company unveiled project digits a $3,000 personal AI supercomputer
01:21:24 ◼ ► powered by new GB 10 grace Blackwell superchip Reuters reports that yesterday Nvidia CEO
01:21:28 ◼ ► Jensen Huang hinted to investors and analysts that there are bigger plans for the ARM based
01:21:33 ◼ ► CPU within that chip code developed with MediaTek quote you know obviously we have plans Wang
01:21:39 ◼ ► said during an investor presentation referring to the new 20 core desktop CPU but he said
01:21:50 ◼ ► ambitions though and Huang suggested that it may also bring the CPU to market independent
01:21:55 ◼ ► of Nvidia now they could this is a quote now they could provide that to us and they could
01:21:59 ◼ ► keep that for themselves and serve the market and so it was a great win-win Huang said yeah
01:22:04 ◼ ► so MediaTek MediaTek makes many chips in the industry one of the things they're known for
01:22:09 ◼ ► is making the chips that power a lot of the TVs there's a lot of disappointment with MediaTek
01:22:29 ◼ ► it's a Sony television that uses a MediaTek chip for a part of its processing to handle
01:22:33 ◼ ► like the HDMI and stuff and it only supports two HDMI 2.1 ports that do 48 gigabits per
01:22:39 ◼ ► second and then the other two ports are lower bandwidth the companies that don't use MediaTek
01:22:59 ◼ ► connections and finally this weird limitation where you got two good ports and two bad ports
01:23:03 ◼ ► that'll be gone and insert TV brand here will be just like LG and Samsung and the full four
01:23:14 ◼ ► a TV chip that can support four HDMI 2.1 ports and we're about to have HDMI 2.2 so I'm a
01:23:20 ◼ ► little bit angry at MediaTek but let's set that aside Nvidia why would they be interested
01:23:26 ◼ ► in making anything on the desktop for desktop CPUs well we've talked about this before Microsoft
01:23:33 ◼ ► with its Windows on ARM and the what was it called a Co-Pilot Plus PC branding thing where
01:23:38 ◼ ► their ARM based Windows computers are required to have certain minimum AI capabilities and
01:23:44 ◼ ► Nvidia has been looking at this and saying we could do that we're the best at AI we have
01:23:49 ◼ ► the best GPUs we've got this sewn up all we need is a little ARM CPU and we've got some
01:23:58 ◼ ► can do this in our sleep and I have to say of all the different companies that are making
01:24:02 ◼ ► chips that are embarrassing Intel's sad chips all you know the ARM chips made for Windows
01:24:08 ◼ ► PCs Nvidia would probably be really good at it like they're pretty good at making chips
01:24:17 ◼ ► mobile stuff we don't have time for it today but we'll get to it in a future show maybe
01:24:21 ◼ ► talking about there is a mobile 5090 like Marco has got those gaming laptops with mobile
01:24:26 ◼ ► Nvidia chips in them they do make mobile chips don't you know get them yeah low power is not
01:24:32 ◼ ► Nvidia's strength strength but you know that like this little this little Mac mini thing
01:24:40 ◼ ► a huge amount of power and it's surprisingly powerful so this is something to watch like
01:24:44 ◼ ► if Intel is gonna be having its problems that we've discussed on past shows and there and
01:25:00 ◼ ► I would love it if Nvidia said you know what alright fine fine no if no one else is gonna
01:25:15 ◼ ► them in your laptops fine like they could be essentially the Apple of the PC world where
01:25:22 ◼ ► they make the best silicon that everyone wants to put in their high-end things or whatever
01:25:26 ◼ ► and so far they've just been like why would we do that we're making so much money making
01:25:30 ◼ ► these AI you know I don't figure what they call them they're not really called GPUs but
01:25:45 ◼ ► is gonna do it maybe we will and so I'm rooting for them I'm not rooting for MediaTek because
01:26:30 ◼ ► Yeah putting the URL to get on the test flight on everybody's member page so that would be
01:26:35 ◼ ► a way instead of sending out like invitation emails to everybody you would just go to your
01:26:49 ◼ ► I'm probably going to do that when I'm ready to do it which means that when I do actually
01:26:57 ◼ ► One I have to tell everyone the name of the app which I haven't yet you'd find out when
01:27:04 ◼ ► Two probably on a future episode I will have to give this whole big spiel about what it's
01:27:08 ◼ ► going to mean to be on the test flight for this app I'll probably do what Casey did which
01:27:12 ◼ ► is like okay if you're an ATP member you get access to the test flight if you don't want
01:27:21 ◼ ► released all those test flights will expire like it'll be a separate group just for ATP
01:27:31 ◼ ► free copy of the app although unlike Casey's app if you got on my test flight and use my
01:27:51 ◼ ► few members valuable for his development I mean you if you want to expand on that Casey
01:27:55 ◼ ► yeah I mean we don't need to belabor it but very briefly I had a pretty robust test flight
01:28:09 ◼ ► give me some useful feedback opening it up to a far more international audience opening
01:28:15 ◼ ► it up to people who are of different abilities and you know different familiarities with
01:28:25 ◼ ► and things of that nature it really really I think made the app a lot better it it also
01:28:41 ◼ ► of this is I didn't include ratings anywhere in the app when it was starting the test flight
01:28:46 ◼ ► cycle and if it were left up to me I would still not have them in the app because I find
01:28:50 ◼ ► ratings to be silly and useless and I don't like them at all I think they're a waste of
01:28:54 ◼ ► time however everyone said to me where are the ratings I must have the ratings so after
01:29:01 ◼ ► being browbeat for literally months about it I eventually added the ratings and I think
01:29:15 ◼ ► audience really helped make the app that much better not to mention you know bug fixes and
01:29:24 ◼ ► cut everyone off as soon as the app was released and I think you know for various several reasons
01:29:30 ◼ ► I think Jon you should do the same but yeah I definitely enjoyed it and I definitely think
01:29:34 ◼ ► it was worthwhile yeah I will definitely need like a lot of a lot of people to try the app
01:29:39 ◼ ► this is the app that I described as an incredibly dangerous app on a previous episode because
01:30:07 ◼ ► would just love to get a larger group to try it out and send me all their error reports
01:30:23 ◼ ► a eliminating all my potential customers because the only people who are ever gonna buy this
01:30:27 ◼ ► app are people listen to the show and I give it the app to every one of them for free and
01:30:30 ◼ ► they get rid of all their duplicates there's no reason for ever to buy the app unlike Casey's
01:30:36 ◼ ► in them my app they just fix everything on their disk and they're like well I don't need
01:30:46 ◼ ► All right thank you to our sponsors this week Wild Green and Delete Me and thanks to our
01:30:51 ◼ ► members who support us directly you can join us atp.fm/join one of the perks of membership
01:30:56 ◼ ► is ATP Overtime our weekly bonus segment this week on Overtime we're gonna be talking about
01:31:02 ◼ ► the news that Apple Intelligence summaries might be getting warning labels or some other
01:31:10 ◼ ► result of some BBC news headline drama recently so we're gonna be talking about that in Overtime
01:31:36 ◼ ► accidental John didn't do any research Marco and Casey wouldn't let him cause it was accidental,
01:32:35 ◼ ► mind that at least once per year I want to do this which is I want to thank the ATP patrons
01:32:46 ◼ ► that's in the show all the time but once per year seems appropriate to me you may be wondering
01:32:50 ◼ ► what the heck is an ATP patron am I an ATP patron you would know if you were here's what
01:32:54 ◼ ► ATP patrons are first of all you want to find out go to atp.fm/patron ATP patrons are people
01:33:07 ◼ ► membership yes you heard that right and why does this exist because people asked for it
01:33:18 ◼ ► and we'd be like oh that's very nice of you but eventually several years in people kept
01:33:23 ◼ ► asking about it I'm like you know what they keep asking us for a way to give more money
01:33:34 ◼ ► obviously not a lot of people do this I think I tried to explain it well on the the FAQ
01:33:47 ◼ ► multiple reasons first of all isn't that nice of them they want to support the show above
01:33:50 ◼ ► and beyond what membership does they don't want to keep buying t-shirts and other things
01:33:54 ◼ ► like that they just want to give more money on a monthly or annual basis above and beyond
01:34:05 ◼ ► did the the annual discount to decrease the price of annual membership we're so nervous
01:34:13 ◼ ► just multiply the number of your annual memberships by the discount that's how much money you're
01:34:16 ◼ ► losing and you hope you're gonna make up that gap by more people signing up but let me tell
01:34:23 ◼ ► you when we did that annual membership more people did sign up but I had this thing that
01:34:30 ◼ ► a money loser right and then you're like okay we're getting closer and closer to break even
01:34:33 ◼ ► closer closer to break even it didn't look like we were gonna make it and you know what
01:34:50 ◼ ► it literally gives me additional dollars and it literally made our annual membership get
01:34:58 ◼ ► year thank you to every ATP patron the small number of I feel like I could meet you all
01:35:04 ◼ ► and shake all of your hands even people who choose to pay one more dollar than the list
01:35:09 ◼ ► price for membership we appreciate it because that really shows us your you know your ability
01:35:21 ◼ ► it so I wanted to thank everybody out there thank you for being an ATP patron that's all
01:35:26 ◼ ► yes thank you for me as well and I'm sure Casey too oh very much so I mean any any member
01:35:30 ◼ ► of course you have our undying love and gratitude but the patrons have just that little little
01:35:36 ◼ ► bit more so thank you to all of you all right so in the show notes Marco is done what Marco
01:36:00 ◼ ► have you done this time did he buy something long or is it going to be a long segment about
01:36:04 ◼ ► something that he bought right I'm guessing the latter probably the latter I have bought
01:36:11 ◼ ► the second worst thing someone can buy a boat it's not a boat that's the first worst thing
01:36:16 ◼ ► Bingham let me try to guess what it is the second worst thing a pickup an Italian sports
01:36:23 ◼ ► car oh if only I would say some sort of vehicle I'm not clear what kind though now I want
01:36:33 ◼ ► to first preface this by saying I'm only sharing this information because I really trust our
01:36:40 ◼ ► audience to be good please don't make me regret sharing this please don't be creepy about
01:36:52 ◼ ► worse purchase than that okay all right now this was also never part of my plan but sometimes
01:37:01 ◼ ► life deals you a different hand than you expected and your plans change now in the context last
01:37:09 ◼ ► winter we're in the middle of a giant house move and a renovation of the new house this
01:37:16 ◼ ► was a massively stressful and disruptive time for my family our home life our logistics
01:37:29 ◼ ► stressful and disruptive time for my professional life and my app as well so this is just a
01:37:35 ◼ ► massively busy disruptive hectic time and last winter the owner of my favorite restaurant
01:37:45 ◼ ► oh no oh no oh my god you did not buy I don't want to name it but you did not buy a restaurant
01:37:51 ◼ ► it's not a zoo the owner of my favorite restaurant last winter who is in his late 70s and wants
01:37:56 ◼ ► to retire it says I'm gonna sell the restaurant Marco no you know we need you on the show
01:38:03 ◼ ► you don't have time for this no we need you not to drain your your fortune into this terrible
01:38:08 ◼ ► money-losing business now I went back to TIFF and I was like oh my god they're selling because
01:38:38 ◼ ► I cannot stand for this I can't this is not making me happy I'm getting so stressed out
01:38:44 ◼ ► just listening to the story and I was like well can we buy it like what would that look
01:38:50 ◼ ► like we go to this restaurant all the time everyone there knows us we know everyone there
01:39:03 ◼ ► it if we did it and we met with her and we're like hey what how could this work could we
01:39:18 ◼ ► Did you talk to anyone else who has ever owned a restaurant besides the person who is going
01:39:25 ◼ ► And the reason the reason this even seemed plausible is that relative to other restaurant
01:39:31 ◼ ► situations this is less difficult so you know it wouldn't be starting a restaurant from
01:39:36 ◼ ► scratch it wouldn't be changing a restaurant it wouldn't be buying a failing restaurant.
01:39:51 ◼ ► So we went back and we're like thinking about it we started looking at like if we bought
01:39:56 ◼ ► it how would we pay for it how would this work how would that work and we were waffling
01:40:01 ◼ ► over it and as we were trying to figure out whether we should do it one night Tiff said
01:40:16 ◼ ► Because the thing is if we didn't buy it I know what would happen I know all the people
01:40:22 ◼ ► at the beach who would have the money and the motivation to buy restaurants and it would
01:40:26 ◼ ► not be the same it would like and this restaurant is a beloved community restaurant like all
01:40:40 ◼ ► Like what's the tell me the nightmare scenario tell me give me the it's a wonderful life
01:40:51 ◼ ► What makes this place the reason why everyone loves this place is that it's very good it
01:40:59 ◼ ► like living in a baseball stadium everyone there is guaranteed a certain number of customers
01:41:03 ◼ ► just because they are captive audience and so not everything is good or you know sometimes
01:41:08 ◼ ► things are overpriced or whatever like you know it's not an amazing environment for quality.
01:41:24 ◼ ► that's something that I cannot say about almost any other place there and so everyone loves
01:41:37 ◼ ► So when she said what you know could we imagine our life without it I'm like no like because
01:41:41 ◼ ► that's that's our place it's it's a bar and restaurant it's our bar and it's our restaurant.
01:41:59 ◼ ► Oh my god congratulations but I cannot believe you've done this and please don't quit the
01:42:26 ◼ ► So here's why we because look and we were talking to everybody you know we were talking
01:42:45 ◼ ► And of course the second question was always you know do you have any experience running
01:42:56 ◼ ► So the reason why is because we know all the people and everyone except the owner's family
01:43:07 ◼ ► The chef, the entire kitchen crew, the front of house staff, our manager, the assistant
01:44:02 ◼ ► We love the place and our priorities are maintaining the quality, maintaining the standards and
01:44:16 ◼ ► obviously from a position of privilege here like this will not be our family's only income
01:44:26 ◼ ► natural disaster that really impacts the beaks that reduces things to the point where we
01:44:44 ◼ ► Yeah so you know as part of the deal like they shared their accounting of previous years
01:44:48 ◼ ► with us and we had our accountant look at it and you know just make sure like everything
01:44:57 ◼ ► The fact is so first of all it's also a seasonal business so we are only needing to work on
01:45:01 ◼ ► it for like six months a year and it does make money because again the beach like certain
01:45:14 ◼ ► There is not that much competition and there can't ever be any more due to local zoning
01:45:20 ◼ ► People want to go to the beach and go to a restaurant and go to a bar so they make good
01:45:23 ◼ ► money consistently and you know we've run numbers a bunch of different ways and I think
01:45:27 ◼ ► we can keep it making money while also having a general manager do the vast majority of
01:45:34 ◼ ► you know what the owners were previously doing and I know this is gonna be very very hard.
01:45:51 ◼ ► This is the kind of place where you know in town people would it's the kind of place you
01:46:05 ◼ ► Tiff and I you know they were still open for the season and we would like you know go there
01:46:08 ◼ ► all the time of course and we'd look around and be like look at how much everyone loves
01:46:14 ◼ ► Like you look around you see because you know it's a small town we know a lot of people
01:46:27 ◼ ► Again it's not true of everywhere like you know different places have different clientele
01:46:29 ◼ ► different dynamics and like this is like the home base of town and if this would get worse
01:46:56 ◼ ► We kind of felt like it's it's us giving back to the community and and and again and this
01:47:00 ◼ ► is from a place of great privilege that we could buy it because the reality of what would
01:47:05 ◼ ► happen if we didn't would be a group of investors would have to buy it probably because prices
01:47:10 ◼ ► are high out there because you know it's New York it's far around it's real estate it includes
01:47:19 ◼ ► own the building too again it's one of the reasons that makes this easier than many restaurant
01:47:23 ◼ ► businesses is like when you own your own building that's a that's a pretty big deal and we know
01:47:36 ◼ ► in town it doesn't lead to quality very reliably sometimes it can work it often doesn't and
01:47:48 ◼ ► community and we knew that like we can do this with our priorities and with our resources
01:47:55 ◼ ► we think we can do a good job and if it turns out we can't we can sell it again down the
01:48:06 ◼ ► I mean in the CGP Grey Cortex you know theme parlance I kind of see this as the year of
01:48:30 ◼ ► tech already and I realize that not everything in my life needs to be tech what like what
01:48:42 ◼ ► it's great that's not all I want to do with my life is just make another app then another
01:48:51 ◼ ► podcast and I'm going to keep doing it I also have other things in my life other things
01:48:55 ◼ ► I do and I think this is going to be a big addition to that one of the things that that
01:49:02 ◼ ► I find lacking in tech is in person connection you know we're really good at other kinds
01:49:15 ◼ ► platforms and networks but when you're really having you know a challenging time or you
01:49:27 ◼ ► the places in person happens is at a bar or a restaurant and the beach is a very special
01:49:43 ◼ ► and so it's a place where I've gotten a lot of in person connection and also doing this
01:49:51 ◼ ► it will allow me to broaden my horizons in a bunch of ways like first of all the probably
01:49:57 ◼ ► the scariest one but one that I'm I think I'm ready to tackle I've never managed people
01:50:22 ◼ ► of the operations to the general manager I'm sure some of it will land on us but we have
01:50:29 ◼ ► a really good staff in place and we have a really good manager and that will help a lot
01:50:45 ◼ ► even just the basics of like real like business real estate like I learned that you that you
01:50:49 ◼ ► pay very different rates for power and internet service when you are a storefront there's
01:50:56 ◼ ► all sorts of like just realities like different types of insurance I have to have now different
01:51:00 ◼ ► you know liabilities workers comp like all there's so much stuff I've never had to deal
01:51:04 ◼ ► with because of the types of businesses that I'd be running real life business things that
01:51:09 ◼ ► I've never had to tackle and yes some of them are pains in the butt but most of them are
01:51:14 ◼ ► learning experiences there's also a lot of tech in a restaurant a lot like there's like
01:51:20 ◼ ► we know that there's all like the the which I love the acronym the POS the point of sale
01:51:25 ◼ ► system I laugh every time I see POS those are all iPads and tablets now they're networked
01:51:31 ◼ ► one of the complaints of the of the staff from the previous setup is that the networking
01:51:40 ◼ ► how to run a restaurant but that part that I can fix like so that you know there's there's
01:51:44 ◼ ► you know opportunity like that for me to like help out in ways that I know how like yeah
01:51:50 ◼ ► I can transfer the website to a new domain like no problem I got our email set up I got
01:51:55 ◼ ► like you make the menu not a PDF yeah of course like yeah like you know I've made fun of restaurant
01:52:00 ◼ ► websites so much over time now everyone can come and make fun of mine hours yeah and then
01:52:06 ◼ ► like the hours and the phone number at the top and the phone number yeah and the address
01:52:10 ◼ ► oh my god yeah there's like there's there's so much look collaboration like today I was
01:52:15 ◼ ► trying out notion and base camp I'm trying to figure out like you know how do I organize
01:52:24 ◼ ► like there's just so much stuff that huge areas of tech that I've never had to use there's
01:52:29 ◼ ► things like how do you have a TV signal that broadcast to TVs in the bar that shows the
01:52:51 ◼ ► you know tell me they make splitter and repeater boxes they use them on I know about them as
01:53:03 ◼ ► so we'll do that but like there's all sorts of and and part of it also like because it's
01:53:08 ◼ ► at the beach there there are huge areas of of complexity that we don't have to deal with
01:53:14 ◼ ► for instance at the beach there's no delivery drivers because there's no drivers because
01:53:19 ◼ ► there's no roads and there's no cars so you don't have to do we don't have to deal with
01:53:22 ◼ ► like DoorDash and Uber Eats and that you know on all there's so much stuff we don't have
01:53:31 ◼ ► explore new tech so you know don't worry there's gonna be plenty of show content possibilities
01:53:41 ◼ ► what you can't just play music over the speakers that's not legal you can't just show pay-per-view
01:53:50 ◼ ► that I can discover that many of our listeners probably you know might use in their lives
01:53:54 ◼ ► that we've never had exposure to before but also just just for it purely from the angle
01:54:06 ◼ ► a it's a brand new type of thing some of it I'm gonna be good at just because I know tech
01:54:11 ◼ ► and I'm good at paperwork so I've had a lot of business I've done a lot of paperwork so
01:54:14 ◼ ► some of it's just that a lot of it I'm gonna be terrible at and there's gonna be a huge
01:54:18 ◼ ► learning curve and one of the biggest things I'm gonna have to learn to delegate and ask
01:54:29 ◼ ► be so I think it's gonna be really interesting I know on paper this is a stupid thing to
01:54:36 ◼ ► do and that's why I like the accountants and the bankers are like why are you doing this
01:54:41 ◼ ► because on paper this makes no sense but the people who know the restaurant and who know
01:54:47 ◼ ► us the reaction from them largely has been thank God we bought it that someone else didn't
01:54:58 ◼ ► So having watched now hundreds of hours of people are rebuilding boats on YouTube I have
01:55:04 ◼ ► to say that I think the boat would probably be easier but but I will say this after hearing
01:55:12 ◼ ► your whole story two things one I think this restaurant sounds like it is much more likely
01:55:22 ◼ ► whereas this is a business that already makes money and worst case scenario you sell it
01:55:25 ◼ ► because you have the real estate that is your main asset and that is going to appreciate
01:55:32 ◼ ► even or ahead long term on this just by selling the property so that's great and two everything
01:55:38 ◼ ► you're saying about doing this as a community service makes total sense like we all know
01:55:42 ◼ ► what happens when in the business world private equity or in the you know the physical world
01:55:59 ◼ ► so how can we cut costs let's you know fire people make everything cheaper anything we're
01:56:03 ◼ ► spending too much money on can we find a crappier version of that that is still marginally acceptable
01:56:08 ◼ ► and you just drain every ounce of value out of the business by cutting costs and squeezing
01:56:13 ◼ ► everything and just making it miserable until eventually goes bust and then you're like
01:56:17 ◼ ► oh well we made money during those years and it's just it's a terrible thing and I know
01:56:29 ◼ ► institution they see it as a business which is but I think the bankers and the accounts
01:56:40 ◼ ► you just took this money and invested it somewhere but as a way to prevent someone who sees it
01:56:46 ◼ ► as a business from buying this business and treating it like a business and you know immediately
01:56:51 ◼ ► cutting costs and decreasing quality because hey you have a captive audience you're gonna
01:56:56 ◼ ► be making money anyway and essentially ruining your favorite restaurant it does make some
01:56:59 ◼ ► sense so I think this is a noble thing that you're doing I think it is I'm not gonna say
01:57:05 ◼ ► foolish I'm going to say let's say brave let's use that let's say it is a brave thing that
01:57:11 ◼ ► you're doing it sounds like you're doing it for the right reasons would you say that Marco
01:57:26 ◼ ► the building and you've got the property that makes me feel so much better about and the
01:57:29 ◼ ► fact that the business has been making money up until that point that worst case scenario
01:57:34 ◼ ► oh well you will be able to sell it that real estate will even when when the hurricane comes
01:57:40 ◼ ► and washes every building off of that island you will still be able to sell that real estate
01:57:43 ◼ ► because it will still be worth money to somebody who's going to rebuild after the hurricane
01:57:48 ◼ ► wipes all the structures off right so I wish you luck I hope you don't get too distracted
01:57:59 ◼ ► how have I been the last year well yeah I mean have you ever met anyone who runs a restaurant
01:58:04 ◼ ► do they seem relaxed you know but and I appreciate I appreciate you know what you're saying and
01:58:10 ◼ ► and you know what you're saying what you said a minute ago about you know the the pressures
01:58:14 ◼ ► of investors who treat it as a business that's why we didn't want to go to a group of investors
01:58:19 ◼ ► because even again even if they have the best of intentions the reality is if you're looking
01:58:27 ◼ ► how can we reduce costs and increase income and you're that's not what you're that's not
01:58:48 ◼ ► that might save a little bit of money do it the best way I'd rather be the best and make
01:58:52 ◼ ► less money than maximize for money and that's something that groups of investors don't have
01:59:06 ◼ ► they want that's what they need so that tends to happen over time with anything that has
01:59:10 ◼ ► like a bunch of investors whereas we can actually just treat it as a labor of love that does
01:59:16 ◼ ► not that's not to say it's going to lose money it won't but you know as maybe the first year
01:59:22 ◼ ► know kitchen equipment and stuff like that but you know for the most part we intend for
01:59:26 ◼ ► this and and we think there's a pretty good chance that it will be a profitable business
01:59:30 ◼ ► you know it's not going to have the margins that software is our margins are embarrassingly
01:59:40 ◼ ► while also making it really great like do I need to have you know a backup cell connection
01:59:51 ◼ ► power outage no business wise that's that's probably you know 60 bucks a month we don't
01:59:56 ◼ ► need to spend but I'm going to spend it because I want to be good well you know one of the
02:00:00 ◼ ► other things like there's so many opportunities in restaurants because we see it again these
02:00:05 ◼ ► are seasonal businesses in a place where it's expensive to get stuff shipped to it a lot
02:00:10 ◼ ► of businesses have to cut costs just to stay afloat on you know little shortcuts here and
02:00:18 ◼ ► they run out of their their main kegs they don't order new kegs if they're going to close
02:00:43 ◼ ► that they can get what they want until the day we close than to go there and be disappointed
02:00:50 ◼ ► there's all sorts of opportunities like that for like you know I am not a good restauranteur
02:00:59 ◼ ► people I know business stuff like that from my app is I know a lot about things like pricing
02:01:05 ◼ ► psychology customer feelings customer loyalty customer satisfaction I know a lot about that
02:01:10 ◼ ► stuff so there are things I can bring to this business you know even if it's not anything
02:01:22 ◼ ► to be very interesting but I just I like the the new challenge of it and I like the diversification
02:01:28 ◼ ► of it and I like the the community service angle for it and even though I know I'm going
02:01:32 ◼ ► to be totally underwater this summer hopefully just figuratively with with all sorts of you
02:01:39 ◼ ► know work and and just you know a hectic situation for a little while I also know I'm not doing
02:01:45 ◼ ► it alone if I try to do it alone I will definitely fail but I also know that I can't and I'm
02:01:57 ◼ ► good staff I cannot keep saying that enough I'm not saying this as a like you know Apple
02:02:01 ◼ ► support the troops kind of thing they really are an excellent staff and that's why we are
02:02:05 ◼ ► doing it that's why we knew we could do it and I think we will be pretty good at keeping
02:02:10 ◼ ► the good people at getting the good getting the best people and keeping the best people
02:02:15 ◼ ► and because we will be good at that everything else I think will follow we are good at keeping
02:02:37 ◼ ► dishes you got to be a line cook well maybe not a cook I don't know everything that you
02:02:41 ◼ ► think you could conceivably do that you would like hire someone for the season to do you
02:02:49 ◼ ► about how bad you are at it I am so here for this no I I want to take a moment and echo
02:03:04 ◼ ► so much more than you can I am and I am naturally a worrier and I'm also worried that you know
02:03:12 ◼ ► be a turd I'm just saying you know this is a this is going to be an incredible time suck
02:03:21 ◼ ► are still kosher with the with you know getting everything done in a timely fashion and so
02:03:33 ◼ ► I've talked about from time to time on the show this was I want to say 2022 I might have
02:03:42 ◼ ► lot of ways it's kind of a crappy pool like the facilities are not great but that's not
02:04:00 ◼ ► many people there's your home your work and a third place and maybe that's church or something
02:04:07 ◼ ► like that maybe it's a club or something like that but our family the list family didn't
02:04:17 ◼ ► did during covid coming out of covid we decided to join the pool and even though we wanted
02:04:23 ◼ ► it as a place where we could go and have some fun during the summer you know just the four
02:04:28 ◼ ► of us it very quickly became our third place and as someone who did not grow up with any
02:04:34 ◼ ► particular organized religion in my life which I would argue is mostly for the best but that's
02:04:38 ◼ ► neither here nor there I didn't really ever have a solid third place you know I had work
02:04:44 ◼ ► or school and that was it in home you know I never really had a third place and the pool
02:04:50 ◼ ► was an incredible incredible valuable addition to our lives not because it's some hoity-toity
02:05:03 ◼ ► like it's not fancy but that's not the point the point was it was a place where we could
02:05:06 ◼ ► gather with friends and I I would pay not you know maybe not literally but I would figuratively
02:05:18 ◼ ► our family and since you and Tiff are in the position that you can literally pay some money
02:05:28 ◼ ► perfect sense and I echo what John says that this is a very bold thing to do it's if you're
02:05:44 ◼ ► you that and and to be clear like you know with with the show and you know your worries
02:05:50 ◼ ► I would give up overcast before I give up ATP like I don't think I need to give up either
02:05:55 ◼ ► one honestly you know one of the I mean this has been quite a year trying to get you know
02:06:01 ◼ ► the overcast rewrite the move the house move like getting all the stuff done during this
02:06:12 ◼ ► doing all of that stuff like in the other world like the in the overcast world the huge
02:06:23 ◼ ► likelihood like the massive rewrite is pretty much done you know there's still the whole
02:06:30 ◼ ► app isn't done but the the rate at which I need to be writing code every day has dropped
02:06:36 ◼ ► dramatically and and again like and in tech I kind of feel not just that I can't get that
02:06:47 ◼ ► know larger things you know larger moves larger trends larger companies you know the the big
02:06:54 ◼ ► social networks and you know the big the big tech companies a lot of the fun has drained
02:07:06 ◼ ► I love Apple products even even as Apple the company is being some you know a little bit
02:07:11 ◼ ► turdy in certain areas like I love Apple products I love computers I will want to talk about
02:07:24 ◼ ► policies and all this stuff like I am getting so worn out and burnt out with that kind of
02:07:29 ◼ ► stuff and and when you look at like you know a lot of these bigger companies the the world
02:07:35 ◼ ► of big tech the nerds left the stage a long time ago the business people have been running
02:07:48 ◼ ► other big mature industry the higher up you go or the bigger you try to get the less I'm
02:07:54 ◼ ► interested I like the small stuff I mean you know besides the fact that Apple's the biggest
02:08:02 ◼ ► I love Apple stuff to do small stuff I don't want to start the next giant AI startup to
02:08:10 ◼ ► replace millions of people's jobs like that's the last thing I want to do I don't want to
02:08:14 ◼ ► run a social network where I'm having to make really difficult moderation decisions and
02:08:23 ◼ ► my platform be the one that people are harassing people on or controlling elections or causing
02:08:29 ◼ ► world events to shift like I don't want any of that that's that sounds incredibly unappealing
02:08:37 ◼ ► want to be in be using those apps let alone own one a lot of tech I feel like the nerds
02:08:50 ◼ ► else without us and that's a place often that I don't want to go but our nerdy world is
02:08:57 ◼ ► still here and will always be here just there's now this other bigger world that doesn't really
02:09:12 ◼ ► nerds were over here doing our thing and they don't care about us anymore if they ever did
02:09:23 ◼ ► exactly where I want to be in the world of tech I don't want to expand my tech footprint
02:09:28 ◼ ► anymore and I frankly am not that interested in a lot of new areas of like you know how
02:09:36 ◼ ► could how could I make a startup that expands and gets really like I really don't want that
02:09:48 ◼ ► world the current world is very different and requires very different things so my passion
02:09:52 ◼ ► though for tech stuff is still very real like you know just the other day I was talking
02:09:56 ◼ ► about the cool terminal E Ink thing and I still love buying all this Apple I guess guess
02:10:00 ◼ ► what I'm gonna fill the restaurant with Apple hardware and Ubiquiti hardware and like possibly
02:10:10 ◼ ► a water leak probably a Yolink low-raw thing like there's there's a lot of ways and I love
02:10:16 ◼ ► all that stuff and so that's the area of tech the application side of it the enthusiasm
02:10:22 ◼ ► side of like the nerdy stuff the smaller areas I love all that stuff and I always will so
02:10:41 ◼ ► not really my scene anymore and so this is I'm enjoying this as you know diversification
02:10:47 ◼ ► and new challenges you know both diversification of my income and diversification of you know
02:10:56 ◼ ► really hard and I'm not gonna enjoy it every day I'm sure there's gonna be days where I'm
02:11:01 ◼ ► like why did I do this but I think there will be aspects of it that I really enjoy and really
02:11:07 ◼ ► feel proud of at the end of the day and and I think it will bring me a lot of satisfaction.
02:11:33 ◼ ► and so now you know I have yet another excuse to find a way to come up to Fire Island and
02:11:51 ◼ ► Oh well see that look at the changes already being made well now I feel like a real big
02:11:57 ◼ ► dummy but that's okay but nevertheless I will I will look forward to visiting the restaurant