00:00:00 ◼ ► Um, so I took a vacation to visit Casey. If I'm honest, it was not entirely to visit Casey.
00:00:06 ◼ ► No, that was, that was a happy coincidence if we're honest with each other, but it worked
00:00:11 ◼ ► out well. Casey's there all the time, but there was something else that was there that made
00:00:14 ◼ ► you go now. Uh, yes. Uh, one of my, one of my new favorite bands, Goose was there playing
00:00:21 ◼ ► a couple of shows in Richmond. You know, it's one of the things where like I looked, I'm
00:00:24 ◼ ► like, I kind of want to see Goose's Falls looking at like where they're playing. And you know,
00:00:27 ◼ ► I like a good venue. I also like good seats. And I looked, I'm like, oh, they're playing
00:00:31 ◼ ► in Richmond. That's interesting. Uh, maybe I could fly down there and see Casey and see
00:00:35 ◼ ► Goose. And maybe I could even bring Casey to Goose. And then I looked, I'm like, I go, I
00:00:40 ◼ ► went on like, you know, one of the ticket resale sites and I'm like, let me see if I can get
00:00:43 ◼ ► tickets. And there were three tickets, basically like the best seats you could possibly have
00:00:49 ◼ ► in this venue. The first row of seats behind the general admission pit, but it's also like
00:01:01 ◼ ► You can be seated and be looking above the entire pit and you're perfectly centered, the
00:01:10 ◼ ► like, oh, I can't let these go. And like, and you know, they were like, maybe they were
00:01:14 ◼ ► pricey for Richmond, but they were not pricey for New York, if you know what I mean? So I
00:01:18 ◼ ► was like, oh yeah, this, this is a no brainer. I'm getting these tickets. So I've actually,
00:01:27 ◼ ► So I, we booked everything and, and Casey was first of all, an amazing host. Like, so I flew
00:01:36 ◼ ► in, flew in the day of the concert, like that morning, flew out the next day. Casey was basically
00:01:41 ◼ ► like my private driver. Like he drove me, he picked me up at the airport, dropped me off
00:01:45 ◼ ► the next day at the airport, drove everywhere. And he even brought me to get the, this is
00:01:51 ◼ ► how good of a friend Casey is. He brought me to a chicken salad place for lunch. Now, let
00:01:56 ◼ ► me be clear. This is not a place that serves chicken salad. This is a place that serves
00:02:01 ◼ ► only chicken salad, 12 different flavors of chicken salad. And you can pick and you can get
00:02:07 ◼ ► like, you know, one scoop of each one. And what a good friend Casey is. Like, that's amazing.
00:02:16 ◼ ► So they, they had a bunch of different options. Casey got like a barbecue one that I sampled
00:02:20 ◼ ► and then I got like their classic. I want to know like, you know, what's the, what's the
00:02:23 ◼ ► their regular one. And I also got one that had like pineapple and stuff in it. It was fun.
00:02:27 ◼ ► You know, it's funny you say about the barbecue because I understand where you're coming from.
00:02:32 ◼ ► This is a chain called chicken salad chick. I think it's only in the Southeast US. Um, and
00:02:37 ◼ ► they do a couple of other things besides, besides chicken salad, but for all intents and purposes,
00:02:41 ◼ ► it's all chicken salad and they have something like 12 of them. I forget exactly how many we'll
00:02:45 ◼ ► put a link in the show notes, but, um, the, all of the it's chicken salad chick, right? So all of
00:02:49 ◼ ► the names are silly, like takes on girls' names, the Barbie think the doll with the letter Q
00:02:54 ◼ ► barbecue, get it? Barbie Q barbecue. Uh, I love that one. It is a very subtle barbecue flavor,
00:03:00 ◼ ► but anyone I know that has tried it has at the very least said, Oh, that's pretty good. I get why you
00:03:05 ◼ ► would go John, but truly it's, it's quite tasty. It doesn't look as barbecue as I thought. It's just
00:03:10 ◼ ► like barely pink. Yeah. You get, you get like a hint of the barbecue flavor, but it's not like
00:03:14 ◼ ► overwhelming. It's not just like a chicken salad doused in barbecue sauce. No, no, no, no, no. Then
00:03:19 ◼ ► Marco got the classic Carol and I forget what the other one was. Uh, fruity Fran. No, you didn't
00:03:24 ◼ ► have the only one that has pineapple. Yeah. It doesn't matter. But my perception of Marco is that
00:03:30 ◼ ► generally speaking, Marco would like something a little fancier than, than an equivalent to like
00:03:34 ◼ ► a Panera bread. But I was casting about thinking, where could I take Marco Arment for a, a meal that
00:03:41 ◼ ► would be quick and easy after he's traveled. And even though the travel I believe was relatively easy,
00:03:47 ◼ ► it's still travel. It's still tiring and whatnot. And I thought, Oh, this is a man who used to go for
00:03:52 ◼ ► chicken salad. What every other day, every day for lunch. Why are you avoiding saying that you're
00:03:56 ◼ ► trying to take him to a place that is, uh, like, uh, you know, uniquely Southern? Cause that seems
00:04:01 ◼ ► like what you did. I mean, that wasn't the, but that wasn't the, the, the impetus for it. The impetus
00:04:06 ◼ ► was this is a man who appreciates a chicken salad and let's get some chicken salad. I mean, your other,
00:04:10 ◼ ► your other choice, I guess would have been barbecue. Like you want to take him something,
00:04:12 ◼ ► something he can't get. Well, hold on. Just you wait. Funny you might. We did barbecue the next day
00:04:17 ◼ ► for lunch. Exactly. It sounded like a very healthy trip. It was amazing. The chicken salad wasn't
00:04:21 ◼ ► terrible. I'm sure it wasn't great, but it wasn't terrible. And barbecue is mostly protein.
00:04:29 ◼ ► No, I wanted to fill up entirely on chicken salad. I'm like, I'm not going to have anything else
00:04:33 ◼ ► here. I'm not going to like, you know, I'm not going to waste a stomach space on like potato
00:04:36 ◼ ► salad or whatever. No, I'm going to have more chicken salad. Oh, they have egg salad too. Very
00:04:40 ◼ ► nice. Yeah. But like, that's, that's like going to a steakhouse and ordering the fish. It's
00:04:44 ◼ ► like, you can do it, but like, that's not really what it's for. I mean, the distance between
00:04:47 ◼ ► egg salad and chicken salad is not as far as the distance between a fish and steak. I think
00:04:51 ◼ ► maybe you're mostly eating mayonnaise in both cases. True. Anyway, regardless, even though
00:04:59 ◼ ► we had this amazing chicken salad place and the following day, amazing barbecue, that was
00:05:05 ◼ ► actually not the highlight of this trip. The highlight of this trip was the goose show.
00:05:11 ◼ ► It was incredible. It was so good. It was so good. On multiple levels. Like number one,
00:05:18 ◼ ► you know, I've only, there's only the second time I've seen them. It was, I would say the
00:05:22 ◼ ► second best concert I have ever seen. Like the number one best was fish at the sphere night
00:05:27 ◼ ► three that I went to. Um, that was, that was number one for me. This is number two. It was
00:05:32 ◼ ► that good of a show. Like goose puts on, and this is again, I've seen, I've seen them. I saw
00:05:37 ◼ ► them a year ago and that was also a great show, but they're even better now. Like they're,
00:05:41 ◼ ► they're getting refined and they're getting more time together and more, you know, a bigger
00:05:51 ◼ ► my favorite songs, including some that they hardly ever play. So that was very, uh, very
00:05:56 ◼ ► rewarding. And all of that was topped off by the topper that Casey seemed to really enjoy
00:06:04 ◼ ► it. Now some backstory here, you know, the listeners might recall Casey and I often have
00:06:10 ◼ ► some debates about whether his band, uh, Mr. Dave Matthews, uh, is considered a jam band
00:06:23 ◼ ► bring, I knew Casey probably couldn't handle fish on his first try. Um, unless maybe I slipped
00:06:37 ◼ ► figured like, you know, an, an unadorned Casey, uh, probably would not go right from Dave to
00:06:43 ◼ ► fish. Like that's a big jump. Goose has a lot closer to mainstream appeal compared to fish.
00:06:49 ◼ ► Um, and so I thought this is a good like step into my musical world. Maybe, I thought maybe
00:06:55 ◼ ► Casey would enjoy it and it would at least show him like, when I say that Dave Matthews is,
00:07:00 ◼ ► is kind of a jam band, but not really like this is kind of what I'm comparing to is like, this
00:07:06 ◼ ► is definitely a jam band. And maybe, maybe I thought maybe this would allow him to just
00:07:11 ◼ ► like mildly appreciate the difference, but instead like days before the trip, Casey was
00:07:17 ◼ ► like listening to a bunch of goose, like in preparation for the show and getting really
00:07:23 ◼ ► into it. And I'm like, Oh boy, this, this could really become like an actual fan here. Uh, and
00:07:30 ◼ ► not only was Casey visibly happy during the show, he was moving more than I was now granted,
00:07:39 ◼ ► you know, this is still like me doing my like, you know, white guy at a jam band dancing, you
00:07:44 ◼ ► know, it's like, let's not get carried away with what I mean by moving here. It's pretty
00:07:50 ◼ ► limited. No hard. Same on that. But yes, I'm, I'm with you. I'm with you to, to, to have,
00:07:55 ◼ ► to have brought you to this, to have forced you to go listen to this, this band that you
00:08:00 ◼ ► probably didn't think you would enjoy. Uh, I mean, that's not entirely true, but finish it off.
00:08:05 ◼ ► And then, and then to see you get super into it and seem to really enjoy it, uh, was incredibly
00:08:12 ◼ ► heartening. And it was, it was a wonderful trip for lots of reasons. You know, that Casey was amazing
00:08:18 ◼ ► as a friend and as a chauffeur. And I got to spend a lot of time with his family and that was really
00:08:22 ◼ ► nice. Uh, and of course the music was really nice, but to also, you know, expand the fandom of one of
00:08:29 ◼ ► my favorite bands into somebody who I would describe as maybe a light skeptic of the genre
00:08:34 ◼ ► was really quite special. No, I appreciate it. I was very glad you came down. Um, it was a semi
00:08:41 ◼ ► last second thing. And the funny thing about it is it was whatever the recording we did right before I
00:08:46 ◼ ► left for Memphis, you had kind of, what is the term or phrase like floated the trial balloon or
00:08:51 ◼ ► whatever. And said, Hey, you know, goose is a thing. It's coming to Richmond. Maybe we should
00:08:54 ◼ ► do it. And I'll say, okay, yeah, sure. I'm sure it would be fine. And then as I'm trying to get to
00:08:58 ◼ ► the airport, you're like, Hey, let's do it. Let's buy tickets. Let's go. And you weren't doing
00:09:02 ◼ ► anything wrong, but I'm in, I'm like trying to get to the airport. And I'm like, okay, fine. Sure.
00:09:05 ◼ ► Great. Whatever. Okay. Yeah. Yeah. And, uh, and I'm sure it was at the time I'm like, I'm sure
00:09:09 ◼ ► it'll all work out. It'll be great. Uh, and so I go to Memphis, I do my thing. I come back from
00:09:12 ◼ ► Memphis. I'm like, all right, now I got to do my deep dive on goose. And I had heard a little bit
00:09:16 ◼ ► of their stuff in the past. Like, you know, the algorithm had pushed a song or two here and there
00:09:20 ◼ ► and I, I liked it. It was fine. It was good. Uh, I liked it. And, uh, I generally just really love
00:09:27 ◼ ► live music. I don't have the occasion to go see live music very often, but it, I, as I said to you
00:09:32 ◼ ► probably 15 times over the couple of, or the really 24 hours you were here, you know, if you put me at a
00:09:37 ◼ ► fish show, as much as I joke, as much as I give you a hard time about it, I bet you, I would enjoy it.
00:09:41 ◼ ► I might leave it and say, that was fun. I don't need to do it again. But at the time I think I
00:09:46 ◼ ► would enjoy a fish concert. And I figured it would be like that with goose, maybe a little bit better,
00:09:50 ◼ ► but as it turns out, these four dudes are unbelievably freaking good. And now I've basically
00:09:57 ◼ ► listened to nothing but goose ever since, uh, I'm ruined. I'm ruined forever. Um, it is, it is really
00:10:03 ◼ ► quite incredible. And the show was phenomenal. And we went with a friend of mine and it was great to
00:10:07 ◼ ► have two fans literally on either side of me. And I cannot thank Marco enough, not only for
00:10:13 ◼ ► buying these tickets in, in annoyingly, but also courteously refusing pay a payment for them,
00:10:17 ◼ ► but truly granted, this is a very small amphitheater in Richmond, Virginia. This may not be helpful to
00:10:22 ◼ ► anyone else, but I tell you what the seats Marco chose as they were perfect. They were absolutely
00:10:28 ◼ ► perfect. And it was such an unbelievable privilege and treat not only to be, to be there with Marco and
00:10:33 ◼ ► my new friend Tyler, but also they, these seats were just incredible and the concert was incredible.
00:10:37 ◼ ► And what's great about these kinds of bands, jam bands or what have you, is that the next day,
00:10:42 ◼ ► their, their entire concert from the soundboard was available on band camp. We'll link the show.
00:10:47 ◼ ► Uh, you can download it for, you know, 10 plus dollars if you want, which is what we did.
00:10:51 ◼ ► And it's incredible. And then, uh, they also simulcast video. So, uh, if you happen to know a guy who's
00:10:58 ◼ ► good with command line tools as maybe Marco does, um, you can get a one month subscription to nugs.net
00:11:06 ◼ ► and you G S I think it is about net. Um, and you might be able to, I don't know, archive something
00:11:13 ◼ ► on nugs.net if you, uh, try hard enough. So, uh, that means, uh, hypothetically one could have an
00:11:19 ◼ ► entire video recording of this incredible concert. So it was a really great 24 hours. It was too quick.
00:11:25 ◼ ► I don't fault you for the time you spent here. I don't fault you for not making like a week long
00:11:30 ◼ ► trip out of it, but it was great because at the end of the trip, I thought, damn, that was great.
00:11:34 ◼ ► I hope we get to do that again soon. And that's the right way to leave a vacation or trip or whatever
00:11:38 ◼ ► you want to call it. But, uh, but thank you again, Marco, for being such a wonderful person to hang
00:11:43 ◼ ► out with for 24 straight hours. It was really great. And you had, and you had my favorite barbecue
00:11:51 ◼ ► Oh, it was amazing. And I think the best part of it all is that because I know Minecraft,
00:11:55 ◼ ► I was able to talk Minecraft to Casey's son and that, and because Casey does not play Minecraft,
00:12:04 ◼ ► that made me the coolest person in the world. And that, in that moment, I, I, I know enough
00:12:10 ◼ ► Minecraft to have a conversation with him and I, I understand the general gist of it, but I certainly
00:12:15 ◼ ► do not have anywhere near the experience that Marco does. And so again, speaking of trial balloons,
00:12:20 ◼ ► I think Declan kind of threw up a trial balloon to see kind of whether or not Marco would bite.
00:12:25 ◼ ► And because Marco's a good person, he did the kindness of biting. And then it was basically like,
00:12:30 ◼ ► okay, let's talk Minecraft. So it was one of those situations where like Declan, come on,
00:12:36 ◼ ► I need you to go do this or we need to go do that. I forget exactly what the situation was, but
00:12:40 ◼ ► we got to go to the concert. I need you to wrap it up big guy. Cause he was overjoyed to talk your
00:12:46 ◼ ► ear off, which was both adorable and also kind of funny. At least they didn't ask you to install
00:12:49 ◼ ► any mods. That'll come in the next visit. I don't know how you two have managed to avoid that.
00:12:57 ◼ ► Very true. But no, it was, it was really great. And you know what? I was starting to go down this
00:13:02 ◼ ► path. I got myself sidetracked, but again, I love live music, even shows that I don't think I would
00:13:10 ◼ ► in, I don't believe in reincarnation, but if reincarnation were a thing, I want to come
00:13:14 ◼ ► back as a musician, not even a good one, not even a popular one, just someone that could actually play
00:13:18 ◼ ► music. And I, I just am, I am in awe at the amount of sound. I said noise, I think on Friday nights,
00:13:26 ◼ ► because I couldn't find a better word for it, but, and I didn't mean it in a pejorative way,
00:13:29 ◼ ► but the amount of sound that came from four guys, it was just unreal. And I don't know if Goose is,
00:13:35 ◼ ► and you're, you know, anyone's particular cup of tea, if you're listening to this. Um, but
00:13:40 ◼ ► if you are willing to just let a song really and truly air out in a way that even a Dave Matthews
00:13:46 ◼ ► fan would be like, Whoa, they really aired that one out. Um, it, it really is incredible. And I,
00:13:52 ◼ ► I really do recommend their stuff. They have plenty of stuff on Apple music and I presume on Spotify as
00:13:56 ◼ ► well. Uh, but I ended up leaving that show very, very much a fan. And I was getting to the point that
00:14:01 ◼ ► I was a fan by the time I walked in, but I was very much a fan leaving that show and they really are
00:14:07 ◼ ► incredible. And I think Marco had said to me during, during the show, which was to, I know
00:14:12 ◼ ► we're going on long. I apologize, but I can't help myself. Uh, there was a set break in the middle of
00:14:16 ◼ ► the, of the, of the show. So they played like hour, hour and a half. And then I had a set break for all
00:14:20 ◼ ► the old dudes to go pee, which the three old dudes went and did. And it was incredible, but we're
00:14:24 ◼ ► talking to 6,000 other old. Right. Exactly. We're talking during the set break. And I, and I think
00:14:29 ◼ ► Marco had said to me, uh, you know, what's incredible about Goose is it's clear that they are on the
00:14:33 ◼ ► rise and we are catching them on the early end of that. And I think from what I can tell, that's very
00:14:38 ◼ ► much true. So if you want to get on the ground floor or nearly the ground floor, now's the time.
00:14:42 ◼ ► Yeah. Go, go see them while they're still playing medium sized venues sometimes. Cause like, you know,
00:14:47 ◼ ► they, they've already sold out Madison Square Garden. Like they're, they're on their way up.
00:14:51 ◼ ► It's going to, it's going to become the, the venues are going to get larger over time and the tickets
00:14:56 ◼ ► will become more scarce and more expensive. And yeah, this is, it's very special to be able to see them
00:15:01 ◼ ► like in a small venue or small, medium sized venue like this. And, uh, and to be able to get those
00:15:05 ◼ ► seats was incredible. Um, and it's funny, like, and there was, there was a point like in the second
00:15:10 ◼ ► set, they went, I would say in jam band terms, um, a little more atmospheric, maybe like the second set
00:15:18 ◼ ► was a little more exploratory and there was some like, you know, kind of, you know, discordant sections
00:15:23 ◼ ► that they were playing around with. And I, I kind of look at Casey, I'm like, okay, this is,
00:15:27 ◼ ► this was a bit challenging for a non jam band person. Like I'm like kind of gauging, like what's,
00:15:32 ◼ ► how is he taking this part? And like, and he got through it and I'm like, okay. I'm like,
00:15:42 ◼ ► All right. Pump the brakes there. Big shoots. We'll see. We'll see. I don't know. It's probably
00:15:46 ◼ ► only a matter of time, but no goose from, to my ears, goose is like, and you said this starting
00:15:51 ◼ ► the segment goose is considerably more approachable and less esoteric. Now maybe fast forward
00:15:55 ◼ ► for two years, maybe I'll have a totally different opinion, but sitting here now, that's how I would
00:15:59 ◼ ► describe it. But again, thank you for facilitating, for making it happen, for, uh, dealing with me
00:16:04 ◼ ► kind of like half paying attention to you as you're trying to book tickets as I'm on the way to the
00:16:08 ◼ ► airport. Um, and again, for purchasing the tickets because they truly hand, hand on heart. I cannot
00:16:14 ◼ ► think of a better place to stand in that venue than where we were standing. We were incredibly lucky.
00:16:21 ◼ ► All right. Uh, let's do some fun stories, uh, in recognition corner. Uh, Richard Ernie was,
00:16:28 ◼ ► uh, recognized in an ATP pixel shirt upon arriving in a place in Scotland. We'll get to that in a second.
00:16:33 ◼ ► We talked about this last week. Uh, Matt Smith wrote in and said, I was that person that records
00:16:38 ◼ ► recognized the guy in Scotland. And apparently I just absolutely murdered the pronunciation of this
00:16:44 ◼ ► city. I am happy to make an attempt, but John, would you like to instruct me on the correct
00:16:48 ◼ ► pronunciation options, please? This shades a little bit into, you did pronounce it weirdly.
00:16:55 ◼ ► do you pronounce, uh, the name of a place in the native language of the place? But here's the thing.
00:17:01 ◼ ► The native language of Scotland is ostensibly English or the most common language in Scotland.
00:17:11 ◼ ► Right. Okay. But so that's, that's like, all right. So yeah, the example is a rectif is like
00:17:15 ◼ ► Paris. We say Paris, but French people don't say Paris. They say Perry or whatever. Right. Uh,
00:17:20 ◼ ► and are we pronouncing it wrong when we say Paris? No. Cause that's how you say the capital city of
00:17:25 ◼ ► France in English. So how do you say this city in Scotland? Should we say it in a Scottish accent or
00:17:34 ◼ ► should we not? And what is the, what is the quote unquote, like American English way to say
00:17:42 ◼ ► What I've heard in the United States is one of the pronunciations that a Scottish person will tell
00:17:48 ◼ ► you was just wrong. They'll say it's not Edinburgh, like a borough of New York city. There are five
00:17:53 ◼ ► boroughs, right? Edinburgh. That's the Scottish person will say, nope, wrong. You don't have it.
00:17:58 ◼ ► I'm like, well, that's not how you pronounce it, but I do hear that a lot in the U S. But anyway,
00:18:03 ◼ ► going by what Scottish people say, and I looked this up and tried to find some reasonable
00:18:06 ◼ ► pronunciations, I found a funny one from someone saying here's three valid pronunciations, uh, which
00:18:12 ◼ ► like based on how much of a hurry you're in, how much of you just swallow up the word. So one is
00:18:18 ◼ ► Edinburgh where it's B U H R U H borough Edinburgh. If you're even more in more of a hurry, you can say
00:18:25 ◼ ► Edinburgh. Now the borough becomes bruh Edinburgh. Bruh. And if you're really in a hurry and you're
00:18:31 ◼ ► native scholars, you can say Embra. Yeah. And now I'm not saying these with a Scottish accent,
00:18:36 ◼ ► so maybe they sound weird, but anyway, Edinburgh, they definitely sound weird. And borough sounds to
00:18:40 ◼ ► me like a Scottish way of saying borough, but I guess not. I can't, we can't say Edinburgh. So we'll
00:18:45 ◼ ► say Edinburgh and there you have it. So we'll just kind of make sure we say Melbourne and Edinburgh or
00:18:51 ◼ ► Embra. Anyway, it's definitely not Edinburgh. And Casey, you said Edinburgh, which is definitely wrong.
00:18:56 ◼ ► Yeah. I don't know where that came from. That, that, that is lunacy. I will be the first to fall on my
00:19:00 ◼ ► sword about that one. That was lunacy, but you're just pronouncing it fanatically, which is fine,
00:19:04 ◼ ► but that's, you know, yeah. I, I, after college, I moved to Pittsburgh and then continuing in
00:19:11 ◼ ► recognition corner, uh, Santiago Hervella writes long time listener, first time caller in day one
00:19:16 ◼ ► overcast user writing in on episode 659. You told the story about how Mark Christian was wearing an ATP
00:19:20 ◼ ► shirt in Manhattan when they were tapped by some nerd who showed them their overcast app currently
00:19:24 ◼ ► listening to ATP. That was me. I'm that nerd. Mark was very gracious when he thought I was just
00:19:28 ◼ ► grabbing his attention for something. And even more so when I showed him my phone screen,
00:19:31 ◼ ► it was hilarious to hear you describe that interaction while I was walking to the office,
00:19:39 ◼ ► Yeah. I saw you on the, the, the subway and you were listening to a nerdy podcast and I said,
00:19:54 ◼ ► Michael writes, I had the same AirPods pro three experiences, Marco. And I also ordered
00:19:58 ◼ ► the AirPods pro two again. I can keep them in my ear all day for getting the there. I spent two
00:20:02 ◼ ► weeks trying to get the AirPods pro three working for me. It was okay initially, but it started to
00:20:06 ◼ ► hurt quickly. Uh, Franklin Delno Stallone writes, I had the same issues market with new AirPods,
00:20:11 ◼ ► but it went away in just about over a week. Uh, so I've either stretched out my ears or a level
00:20:17 ◼ ► of earwax on the AirPods has helped. AirPods would always be a bit of a pain for me when I clean
00:20:21 ◼ ► them fully. So there's possibly something there, but while the noise canceling is better, I kind
00:20:25 ◼ ► of wish they'd go back to the old style. Matthew Schaefer writes, my wife has had airpod pro two
00:20:34 ◼ ► It's made my ears perk up because pretty much everyone agrees that the ANC is very good.
00:20:38 ◼ ► So I had her stand next to a running fan and switch the ANC off and on. And she said there was
00:20:42 ◼ ► really wasn't much of a difference. She could hear the fan just fine. This was shocking to me.
00:20:48 ◼ ► I had her put in my brand new AirPods pro threes and her words exactly were that's approximately
00:20:53 ◼ ► 5,000 times better. AirPods pro two didn't fit in her ears, regardless of which tips she used.
00:20:59 ◼ ► I had no clue this whole time that they're, they've been working about as good as cheap
00:21:03 ◼ ► non ANC earbuds. Obviously I went out and bought her some AirPods pro threes right then and there.
00:21:08 ◼ ► Finally, Michael Gock writes for me, the AirPods pro three were slightly uncomfortable. I ended up
00:21:12 ◼ ► going up in tip size. They didn't go in as far, excuse me, they don't go in as far and they're
00:21:19 ◼ ► So interestingly, so this, when Michael said this, I kind of stuck in my brain. I had literally shipped
00:21:39 ◼ ► Um, so I'm like that, that's annoying. And then there were like, there were these YouTubers
00:21:44 ◼ ► who were like, well, if you, if you angle them differently, like, you know, cause what direction
00:21:49 ◼ ► are the stems pointing? Most people it's somewhere between straight down and straight, like, you
00:21:56 ◼ ► know, 40 or 90 degrees forward. And it turns out a lot of people were saying like, if you
00:22:01 ◼ ► angle them too far down, they fit wrong basically, or they fit less comfortably for a lot of people.
00:22:06 ◼ ► What you're supposed to do apparently with the threes is angle them. So the stems basically
00:22:13 ◼ ► So, so, so on that theory, we've all, I think we've all seen people with AirPods of many different
00:22:22 ◼ ► Sometimes in just ridiculous directions, you're like, there's no way those are in right. Like,
00:22:27 ◼ ► but hearing all the things about how, from like the doctors about how the inside of our ear
00:22:31 ◼ ► canals go off in all sorts of weird directions. I do wonder if it's just like, I mean, the whole
00:22:36 ◼ ► reason there's the ear lotteries, like everyone's ears are a little bit different. And so for
00:22:44 ◼ ► up at an angle and out away from their head, like antennas or something, maybe that's how
00:22:48 ◼ ► their ear is shaped and that's the best position for them. Or maybe they just don't know how
00:22:51 ◼ ► to use ear pods. I, I don't know, but like, I, I do feel like that there is a huge amount
00:22:56 ◼ ► of variability in what the correct angle is for you. I know which video you're talking about.
00:22:59 ◼ ► Oh, point it towards your mouth. If that works for you, great. But I feel like the lesson
00:23:02 ◼ ► is try that thing pointing in different directions because who knows which direction will work
00:23:09 ◼ ► Yeah. So between those videos and between Michael, Michael's, um, post here, like kind of infecting
00:23:16 ◼ ► my brain, like I didn't, I tried to ever, I tried the default medium and everything smaller.
00:23:21 ◼ ► I didn't actually try the large tips. So I'm like, you know what? Fine. Amazon could deliver
00:23:26 ◼ ► me a pair the next morning. Oh, here we go. I've been testing them out with the large tips
00:23:35 ◼ ► They are a lot more comfortable that way. Oh, look at that. That's awesome. Comfortable enough
00:23:41 ◼ ► for you to keep them though? I think so. In reality, they are better in a few ways I do care
00:23:47 ◼ ► about. Like they do sound better. They don't sound massively better, but they do sound better.
00:23:53 ◼ ► You know, as, as mentioned, you know, in the past, like, you know, the bass is a little
00:23:55 ◼ ► bit better. The treble is a decent amount better. Um, the soundstage is a bit wider. Like, you
00:24:00 ◼ ► know, they do sound better and they do isolate better during noise canceling mode. Um, almost
00:24:05 ◼ ► too well for like walking around actually. But you know, there's lots of other times when
00:24:08 ◼ ► you want to use them. So like, I think overall they are better. Um, the water resistance is
00:24:16 ◼ ► better. You know, like there's lots of things about them that are better. Um, so I want them
00:24:19 ◼ ► to work for me ultimately with the largest ear tips and with the mangled towards my mouth,
00:24:25 ◼ ► they fit comfortably enough that so far, I mean, I haven't tried them for more than like
00:24:30 ◼ ► two hours straight. Um, but for two hours straight, I was able to wear them and it was fine. And
00:24:34 ◼ ► that was not the case with the smaller ear tips ever, um, at all. So I've now gotten to
00:24:40 ◼ ► the point where they are fine. Um, the twos are still more comfortable, uh, but the threes
00:24:46 ◼ ► are now good enough with these modifications. So I can keep them. I'm still not sure that
00:24:52 ◼ ► I will keep them because the twos are easier and better for me. Um, but I probably will keep
00:25:01 ◼ ► All right. And then with regard, uh, further regard to active noise cancellation, don't Tony
00:25:07 ◼ ► Denki writes, I use the AirPods pro three on a recent long haul seven 87 flight and compared
00:25:11 ◼ ► them to the Bose quiet comfort ultra over ear headphones. The AirPods pro three were massively
00:25:16 ◼ ► better than the ultras. I was amazed. Combine that with the lighter, less vibration noise
00:25:20 ◼ ► risk from contact with a hard surface in the seat. The AirPods pro three, one battery life
00:25:26 ◼ ► That is a very real thing. If you've ever been on a plane, especially if you have the window
00:25:33 ◼ ► you touch the outside of the case of those headphones to the wall of the plane, Oh yeah.
00:25:41 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean the, the noise cancellation is so much better on the threes. Um, and it was
00:25:46 ◼ ► all like the twos were already good enough that I would use them on planes because again, like
00:25:50 ◼ ► the, the bag space savings are just so big that it was always worth it to me. Um, and then
00:25:56 ◼ ► the threes take it even further. And so I think like, as long as the threes can be comfortable
00:26:02 ◼ ► for you, I don't see much reason for, for most people to get the giant headphones anymore. Like
00:26:09 ◼ ► if you are getting them for noise cancellation on planes or during work or during walking around
00:26:13 ◼ ► or whatever, again, if the, if the pros threes are comfortable enough for you, I think they're
00:26:25 ◼ ► Oh, cool. I'd love to. So, uh, I, a bunch of people keep kept asking me like, Hey, have
00:26:31 ◼ ► you seen the, have you done the live translation with the new AirPods? Like regular people in
00:26:34 ◼ ► my life, like people like in stores and stuff, friends, like people who don't follow the tech
00:26:38 ◼ ► that closely, but they've heard about that. And they don't know they can probably do them
00:26:41 ◼ ► with their own AirPods. Yeah, exactly. So yeah. Number one thing to know again, if people
00:26:45 ◼ ► in your life are asking you about the live translation feature, keep in mind that it's, it doesn't
00:26:49 ◼ ► require the pro threes. It also works on the pro twos and the AirPods four with noise cancellation.
00:26:54 ◼ ► So if you have either of those models, you already have access to live translation, download
00:26:59 ◼ ► Apple's translation app. If you don't already have it. And there's a whole tab, you know,
00:27:02 ◼ ► a live conversation tab. So I've actually tried this now. Um, we had a, uh, a staff party for
00:27:07 ◼ ► the restaurant and we had some chefs who speak Spanish. And so we tried it out like Spanish to
00:27:12 ◼ ► English. I downloaded the model. So it should be like maximum speed. Uh, we had our server,
00:27:17 ◼ ► you know, speaking, uh, in English and we had a chef speaking in Spanish and we had them
00:27:21 ◼ ► kind of gauge like, you know, how accurate it was. It was okay. Like, so number one thing
00:27:27 ◼ ► is like, it is a little bit awkward when no one's done it before or seen it before. Like
00:27:31 ◼ ► you got to be like, Oh wait, who, who holds the phone? Where do I face it? Who's looking
00:27:34 ◼ ► at what do I speak? Does it speak to me? Like, so getting all that worked out is, is, you know,
00:27:39 ◼ ► it takes some doing. Um, and then the, the, the Spanish option, it's like, it's Spanish
00:27:51 ◼ ► a lot, you know, as from like Spanish in other regions and languages and cultures and everything
00:27:55 ◼ ► like that. And so, and I, I didn't say anything about that, but like within the first two sentences,
00:28:01 ◼ ► our chef who was looking at the transition, he's like, this is Spain Spanish. Like he knew
00:28:06 ◼ ► instantly. It was like, this is not what we speak in the kitchen. This is, this is a Spain
00:28:11 ◼ ► thing. This is very different. Um, so he instantly called it out. Um, but overall, like it was good
00:28:17 ◼ ► enough to get the gist of what people are saying. It's not perfect by any means. It missed a lot
00:28:23 ◼ ► of things. It missed a lot of, you know, nuance. It missed a lot of like, you know, idioms, slang,
00:28:27 ◼ ► like it missed a lot of that stuff, but it did communicate the gist of what was being said.
00:28:38 ◼ ► but it did work. And so it, and I tested it a second time when I brought it, uh, earlier today,
00:28:46 ◼ ► I brought it to another place where some friends work and they tried it with one of their people
00:28:50 ◼ ► who speak Spanish and one of their people who speaks English into the same thing and basically
00:28:55 ◼ ► had exactly the same result. Like it's a little awkward. No one knows what to do quite, you know,
00:29:00 ◼ ► at first, but then you try it and it's like, okay, that's kind of the gist of what I said.
00:29:04 ◼ ► And, you know, and it's slow. Um, so I think it is going to be the kind of thing that like it,
00:29:10 ◼ ► it will be useful in a pinch, certainly while traveling. If you've got to work something out
00:29:14 ◼ ► with somebody, um, it's not like nat very natural and conversational. Like you have to speak pretty
00:29:20 ◼ ► slowly. You have to speak pretty loudly for it to hear you or hear the other person correctly.
00:29:24 ◼ ► Again, like it is slow and awkward when people are not used to it. Um, so it's the kind of thing that
00:29:29 ◼ ► I can see being about as useful as like Google translate has always been. And it's the kind of
00:29:34 ◼ ► thing that I can definitely see Apple's version being fine, but Google and maybe open AI probably do a
00:29:43 ◼ ► much better job of this. Um, and certainly as we go into the future, I can see Apple's version staying
00:29:48 ◼ ► exactly the way it is now and Google and open AI's versions being a lot better overall. So I'm glad
00:29:55 ◼ ► this tech exists. It's very impressive. Um, but it's not quite as natural as what everybody might assume
00:30:00 ◼ ► or want it to be. And I don't expect Apple's going to be the best company to do this long-term.
00:30:05 ◼ ► Now, very quick question. Were you basically a passive, uh, viewer for like, or, or listener in
00:30:11 ◼ ► this? Like you weren't doing any of the talking. Yes. Oh, and that was still supported. It's just
00:30:16 ◼ ► whatever it hears it's bringing in and doing its thing. Well, I was like, you know, the, the listener
00:30:21 ◼ ► was wearing my AirPods and holding my phone. Oh, okay. I gotcha. Okay. I was watching and like,
00:30:26 ◼ ► and kind of telling people cause they would ask, wait, do I talk? I say, no, you talk, you listen.
00:30:30 ◼ ► Like I was, I was kind of telling them what to do. I see. Okay. You know, cause they didn't really
00:30:33 ◼ ► know. Um, but so it's, it's, it's a cool feature. Um, it's not going to revolutionize communication
00:30:42 ◼ ► any more than Google translate does, but that's not nothing. Like that's pretty useful in a lot
00:30:47 ◼ ► of cases. So I think it'll be, it'll be a great like casual travel aid. Um, but you know, not going
00:30:54 ◼ ► to, it's not going to be as seamless as it was in the commercial. Gotcha. All right, John, you said
00:30:59 ◼ ► you also tested it. Yeah. I wish I had saved some of these things. Uh, first of all, I, I don't
00:31:03 ◼ ► don't even remember if we, if this follow-up ever made it into one of the episodes, but
00:31:06 ◼ ► someone had sent this thing that saying that Apple's live translation, despite the translate
00:31:11 ◼ ► app, having like the option of like, Oh, we'll go to the server for this, but we'll download
00:31:14 ◼ ► these models while blah, supposedly the AirPods live translation only ever uses local models
00:31:19 ◼ ► for some privacy reason. That's if true. And it seems like it was based on that link that
00:31:23 ◼ ► I can no longer find that we may or may not have talked about in the past episode. Uh, that
00:31:27 ◼ ► is going to hold Apple back because obviously the models that run on the server can be way
00:31:30 ◼ ► better than anything very locally. Now, obviously you have more latency when you go to the server,
00:31:33 ◼ ► but if you have a really good network connection that can be alleviated, especially since it
00:31:37 ◼ ► seems like most of the time you're waiting for the model to compute the result. And maybe
00:31:40 ◼ ► a server could actually even be faster there. If you can get the audio up to it or the whatever
00:31:45 ◼ ► text up to it as fast as possible, depending on what it's doing. Um, anyway, when this came
00:31:50 ◼ ► out, like when, when it was first available, I tried it, but I didn't have anyone to speak
00:31:55 ◼ ► another language with. So I tried to give it like what I felt like was a really challenging
00:32:04 ◼ ► up a Spanish speaking YouTube channel. And that, that YouTube channel is not doing like
00:32:09 ◼ ► what you're being coached by a Marco and trying to speak in non idiomatic, uh, very simple sentences
00:32:15 ◼ ► to get your point across slowly and clearly. Right. This was just, you know, rapid fire real,
00:32:21 ◼ ► like a YouTuber, but in Spanish. Um, and I was amazed that as far as I could tell it again,
00:32:29 ◼ ► it got the gist of it. I can't judge the translation cause I don't speak Spanish, but looking at,
00:32:34 ◼ ► because it shows you both of them looking at like what it thinks the Spanish is and then
00:32:37 ◼ ► what the English is. I can't tell you whether the English is a correct reflection of the Spanish,
00:32:40 ◼ ► but I can tell you the Spanish was looking kind of like what they were saying. I was amazed
00:32:44 ◼ ► that it worked at all, honestly, because this is not a real person. It's a computer screen
00:32:48 ◼ ► playing out of the computer speakers. I'm wearing AirPods. Uh, and yeah, there is a delay, but
00:32:53 ◼ ► I was impressed that it did anything. I've heard people report. We had some feedback. Some people
00:32:57 ◼ ► said I tried it, uh, had these two people tried, somebody spoke and the thing just didn't do
00:33:02 ◼ ► anything. Like it didn't, it didn't, it didn't start translating at all. Like as with any of the
00:33:06 ◼ ► stuff in iOS 26 or any of this new stuff, there are definitely bugs. And I can imagine scenarios where
00:33:12 ◼ ► it just falls on its face and doesn't think there's anything that's supposed to translate
00:33:15 ◼ ► or can't understand it at all. Again, Marco mentioned the various different dialects of
00:33:19 ◼ ► Spanish. There are enough of them and they're different enough from each other, including
00:33:22 ◼ ► not just the pronunciation, but the actual words and everything about them can change in ways that
00:33:26 ◼ ► can thwart the model. So, uh, Apple has added more languages and hopefully they'll add more like,
00:33:31 ◼ ► uh, localizations of different kinds of Spanish. Um, even within Spain, there's, there's just plenty
00:33:36 ◼ ► of different kinds of Spanish within the regions, but it is impressive that it works at all.
00:33:40 ◼ ► It's again, it's not really an AirPods feature. It's really just a feature of your phone that
00:33:43 ◼ ► it's connecting to the AirPods, which is fine. Uh, but I was impressed that it was able to do a
00:33:47 ◼ ► YouTube video. Like I could, I could probably watch the YouTube video and honestly, it would be better
00:33:51 ◼ ► if I just turned on the auto generated English subtitles to the YouTube video, because I can
00:33:58 ◼ ► We are sponsored this episode by open case, a patented iPhone case with a literal open space
00:34:05 ◼ ► in the back of the case to make MagSafe accessories work a lot better. So here's how this works.
00:34:10 ◼ ► The open case, it has like a big oval hole in the back where the MagSafe accessories go,
00:34:16 ◼ ► things like wallets and whatever else. And the great thing about this is like, you know,
00:34:19 ◼ ► when we, you know, with magnets, we talked about like the sandwich squishing force. I forget how
00:34:23 ◼ ► I put it, like the sliding force. If you try to pull a magnet off the back of the case, like straight
00:34:28 ◼ ► off, it's hard to pull it off. But if you slide it, it's a lot easier. So what the open case does
00:34:33 ◼ ► is it gives a space for the like wallet or whatever back there to stay in the middle and
00:34:38 ◼ ► it blocks it from sliding easily, which means a couple of things. Number one, it's just thinner
00:34:44 ◼ ► overall. Cause you, you know, you're not, you're not putting your wallet or whatever on top of the
00:34:48 ◼ ► case. It's just going directly against the phone. But the main thing is it makes it really hard for
00:34:53 ◼ ► it to fall off in everyday use. So it's much more secure. You don't have like your wallet constantly
00:35:02 ◼ ► it's also just a nice minimal, you know, case. Like you still get the protection around the edges,
00:35:06 ◼ ► where it really matters around the corners and everything around the camera. But overall you
00:35:11 ◼ ► save bulk, you save weight and you have, you know, a big window. But if you're not using a MagSafe
00:35:17 ◼ ► accessory to see like the color of your phone, you get the nice new orange phone. You want to see that
00:35:21 ◼ ► color, right? You can see the beauty of the phone. You can see the Apple logo, all that stuff. So
00:35:24 ◼ ► it's nice. So open case, it's a great option for cases. There's no like vendor lock in or anything.
00:35:30 ◼ ► You know, you don't have to buy their accessories. Everything fits in there that reasonably can,
00:35:34 ◼ ► but it's a great option. I really think honestly, I'm going to order one and try it because it looks
00:35:39 ◼ ► pretty cool. And I'm always looking for a good case and this was a great one. So you can see for
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00:35:59 ◼ ► All right. With regard to last week's ask ATP question about filling SSD and particularly iPhone
00:36:09 ◼ ► storage, David Schaub writes, my iPhone 8 got full once resulting in a reboot loop whenever springboard
00:36:14 ◼ ► loaded. Yikes. The solution, accept a call from the lock screen, add a person, type in the passcode,
00:36:21 ◼ ► control center, try and change the wifi, go into wifi settings. And then once in your, once you're in
00:36:26 ◼ ► settings, delete all the things, uh, never let the David continues, never let an iPhone have less
00:36:31 ◼ ► than about five gigs of free space. Why does iOS let you fly so close to the sun recovery should have a
00:36:37 ◼ ► boot directly to settings option. Don't make the phones angry. They don't like it. Nope. Uh,
00:36:43 ◼ ► additionally, with regard to phones, uh, Mike Taffet did some science, which was very kind of him.
00:36:47 ◼ ► Mike writes, I just transferred from an iPhone 17 pro max to an iPhone 17 pro both wired via two
00:36:53 ◼ ► and a half gigabit ethernet, uh, adapters that also take in power through a 10 gigabyte or 10
00:37:00 ◼ ► gigabit, excuse me, uh, ubiquity switch. Neither device ran out of power, but also the unify interface
00:37:05 ◼ ► interface allowed me to see the bandwidth being used by each port. It seems this transfer was running on
00:37:10 ◼ ► average about 500 to 600 megabits per second. So for simplicity, I don't see any reason why wifi
00:37:15 ◼ ► isn't the best option. Again, the USB port is 10 gigabits. This was running at five to 600 megabits,
00:37:21 ◼ ► probably because it was transferring lots of small files. Yeah. Uh, then we have some feedback
00:37:25 ◼ ► with regard to Marco's USB odyssey. This was Marco figuring out that or just discovering that you
00:37:31 ◼ ► couldn't plug in a USB two device to your thunderbolt hub, right? Is that a fair summary? Yeah. If any
00:37:37 ◼ ► USB two device that was plugged in through any thunderbolt hub in any method, except through the pro
00:37:43 ◼ ► display XDRs, back ports would not work anymore. And I had traced the problem to a bad cable,
00:37:54 ◼ ► the problem was fixed. Jack Wolborn writes, I had a thunderbolt cable fail on me a little over a year
00:37:59 ◼ ► ago. And while it wasn't the same symptoms that Marco had, it did involve only some devices working.
00:38:08 ◼ ► Sid Polk writes, uh, I'm starting to think that Tahoe and the latest version of Sequoia made a change in
00:38:13 ◼ ► the thunderbolt or USB that breaks older USB or thunderbolt hubs. My OWC thunderbolt four hub stopped serving
00:38:19 ◼ ► USB. My Caldigit three at work. Now Colonel panics, my Mac, unless I unplug all of my USB devices.
00:38:29 ◼ ► Fabian writes, uh, in this, Fabian was arguably the best person to describe what they were talking
00:38:36 ◼ ► about, but we heard this from a lot of people and I should have thought of this as well. Uh,
00:38:40 ◼ ► but anyway, Fabian writes my USB extension cable came with a sticker that reads quote USB 2.0 low
00:38:45 ◼ ► speed devices, such as a mouse keyboard, USB 2.0 flash drive, USB 2.0 of hub, et cetera.
00:38:50 ◼ ► This is not Fabian's fault. This is the sticker, uh, can only work with one side of the ultra high
00:38:55 ◼ ► rate extension cables interface. If USB 2.0 devices do not work as you expected, please flip the type
00:38:59 ◼ ► C connector over and connect again. So Fabian writes, maybe that's why you had inconsistent results with
00:39:04 ◼ ► the same hardware in inadvertently flipped connector. Additionally, Keith Heaton, uh, provided a pin out
00:39:11 ◼ ► or whatever you would like to call it, a pin diagram of the USB C connector. And we will put a link to
00:39:16 ◼ ► that in the show notes. And it says that you, or Keith writes, USB 2.0 data runs on the A6 and A7 or
00:39:22 ◼ ► B6 and B7 pins of a type C connector. If only the A bank or B bank has an issue, you might be able to
00:39:27 ◼ ► keep using that expensive cable by rotating the connector 180 degrees. So the hub and the computer
00:39:32 ◼ ► are both using the functional bank, even without a cable tester, there are only four possible
00:39:36 ◼ ► combinations. This is worth noting as well. So in my tailgate tub that we've talked about in the past,
00:39:42 ◼ ► I have a, uh, GLI net router that has, that can take in tethering, including via phone via a USB,
00:39:49 ◼ ► uh, a connector, but on the front of the tailgate tub, I put in USB C connectors. And so internal to
00:39:57 ◼ ► the tailgate tub, I have a C to a, uh, line cable, whatever. And I've noticed that I need to make sure
00:40:03 ◼ ► that I connected the exact same way. So I drew on the connector, you know, with like a silvery Sharpie
00:40:08 ◼ ► that shows up in the black connector, which side needs to be on which side of the input on the
00:40:13 ◼ ► tailgate tub. So basically I'm connecting the two sides correctly because I found, wait, why is this
00:40:18 ◼ ► not working? Why is this not working? Why is this? Oh, flip. There it goes. Works perfectly now. And I
00:40:23 ◼ ► didn't think of this when we were recording, but I should have some, my apologies to you, Marco.
00:40:32 ◼ ► Like, cause yeah, what it basically says is like, if one side's pins go bad or whatever part of that
00:40:38 ◼ ► controller, like if one side of pins goes bad, the other side might still work. So flip it over and
00:40:43 ◼ ► try it. That to me is not a solution. The solution is replace the thing that is bad because I'm not
00:40:51 ◼ ► going to like it because it'd be one thing. Like if this is the kind of thing, like it's, if it's part of
00:40:55 ◼ ► my setup that I just plug it in once and it stays there for years, maybe I tolerate that. But this is
00:41:01 ◼ ► like when I take my laptop to go somewhere, I unplug this cable and bring it somewhere. And then when
00:41:06 ◼ ► I get back, I plug this cable back into the laptop and I would not tolerate it working half the time
00:41:12 ◼ ► and having to flip it over for that situation. But to be clear, that's not really the cable's fault.
00:41:16 ◼ ► As far as I understand, it's just circumstantially there's USB two pins on both sides and perhaps
00:41:23 ◼ ► but they're duplicated. So theoretically, it should be able to like, you should be able to plug in a USB-C
00:41:33 ◼ ► or Thunderbolt cable in either direction on either end of the cable and everything should work. If
00:41:37 ◼ ► everything is working properly, it does not matter which direction you plug it in. What they're saying
00:41:41 ◼ ► basically is like, sometimes things don't work properly and it can start to matter. But in that
00:41:49 ◼ ► Or that thing with the sticker that Fabian sent is probably they left out two conductors to save
00:41:58 ◼ ► Yeah. And there was someone else wrote in. I don't have the details of it. It was just like
00:42:02 ◼ ► wrote in just a couple of hours ago about the idea of a dedicated like the USB to alternate mode where
00:42:08 ◼ ► you have dedicated pins on the Thunderbolt cable just for USB. But the other version is where you
00:42:14 ◼ ► don't use that alternate mode and you tunnel everything through Thunderbolt. The theory is that the XDR is
00:42:18 ◼ ► tunnel everything through PCIe and Thunderbolt, whereas the cheaper hubs and other things are
00:42:22 ◼ ► using the USB alternate mode and having the dedicated wires, which is why if those if one
00:42:28 ◼ ► set of those four wires, one pair of those four wires went bad on your cable. Yeah, maybe it would
00:42:39 ◼ ► This was such a nightmare. There's like three things in here, but it's because I thought I will get
00:42:44 ◼ ► one thing in here. Someone said a thing. I'm like, let me try to get an authoritative source. And then
00:42:47 ◼ ► you'll see it just goes down this terrible rabbit hole where there's no straightforward answer. But
00:42:51 ◼ ► we'll try to give you three buckets of information, see if you can reconcile them without reading the
00:42:57 ◼ ► freaking Thunderbolt spec. So on OWC's website, they write that Thunderbolt three cables longer than
00:43:04 ◼ ► seven tenths of a meter are active cables which do not support DisplayPort. Thunderbolt three cables that
00:43:15 ◼ ► Thunderbolt three. They support 10 gigabit USB display port and works with the USB-C display
00:43:36 ◼ ► figure they're web. They know what they're talking about. They're pretty authoritative source, right?
00:43:39 ◼ ► It already from these two bullet points, they're contradictory. Thunderbolt cables longer than 0.7
00:43:44 ◼ ► meters are active, but then it tells me about a passive cable that's that's one meter or longer,
00:43:48 ◼ ► but it's 20 gigabits. Like their two bullet points contradict each other. If I have one meter cable,
00:43:53 ◼ ► well, I'm sure that it has to be active because it says that if they're longer than 0.7 meters,
00:43:57 ◼ ► they're active, except when they're passive. But then they're 20 gigabits, but then they have 10 gigabit USB.
00:44:05 ◼ ► Sure. That's just OWC. Then, then I'm like, because originally I came up with a Reddit result,
00:44:16 ◼ ► Reddit, R-E-B-B-I-T. There's a Reddit comment from LaughingMan11 on active versus passive Thunderbolt
00:44:22 ◼ ► cables, which reads cables rated at 40 gigabits per second with a length of 0.8 meters of all kinds,
00:44:29 ◼ ► Thunderbolt 3, Thunderbolt 4, USB 4, are 100% guaranteed to be passive. If you see 40 gigabit
00:44:34 ◼ ► certified cable at 0.8 meters or shorter, it is a passive cable. For distances between 0.8 and two
00:44:40 ◼ ► meters, some cables are actually certified passive cables. I've seen cable manufacturers stretch and
00:44:44 ◼ ► make one meter 40 gigabit per second passive cables with no problems. They managed to squeeze
00:44:54 ◼ ► So again, there's more info in that post. I just pulled this out, but at least it sounds very
00:44:57 ◼ ► authoritative and, you know, LaughingMan is a reference from an anime series that I like.
00:45:08 ◼ ► you know, and it does really outline that it is possible to have passive cables. In fact,
00:45:13 ◼ ► Then, as with all things, we turned to Wikipedia and Wikipedia writes, "Copper Thunderbolt 4 cables
00:45:18 ◼ ► of up to one meter are passive cables, while longer cables must integrate active signal conditioning
00:45:23 ◼ ► circuitry. Two meters maximum is the length of active cables available for most brands,
00:45:27 ◼ ► including CalDigit, Cable Matters, etc., while Apple is currently the only company that offers a
00:45:32 ◼ ► three-meter active copper cable." It's madness. I dare you to Google this. Notice how all the numbers
00:45:45 ◼ ► passive, how fast things go. The only thing I took from this stupid adventure that I spent so
00:45:49 ◼ ► long wandering through, and I found way more than just OWC Reddit and Wikipedia, but this is a sampling,
00:45:55 ◼ ► is that passive Thunderbolt cables exist. That's it. That's all I can come away with. And they're probably short.
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00:47:59 ◼ ► We spoke about some alternatives to Synology, I don't know, a week or two ago. I forget exactly
00:48:09 ◼ ► when it was, but Colin McKellar writes, have you ever considered QNAP, NASAs, Q-N-A-P? They're
00:48:16 ◼ ► fairly equivalent to Synology in terms of hardware and capabilities, but they have not followed Synology
00:48:22 ◼ ► So I've looked at QNAP back in the day, and I looked again when Colin mentioned it. And they've
00:48:27 ◼ ► come pretty far since I last checked them out. Their software stack looks very Synology-ish,
00:48:31 ◼ ► sometimes down to the exact same like name brand apps or similar looking apps. And the other thing
00:48:37 ◼ ► QNAP has going for them is that they support ZFS, which I like. It is, the thing about ZFS,
00:48:43 ◼ ► and I looked at this when I was looking at the QNAP stuff, is like, it's got way more features than,
00:48:49 ◼ ► it's got lots of cool features, like the automatic self-healing replication. It's got tons and tons
00:48:54 ◼ ► of options. But it is very enterprise-y in that it is farther from the Drobo dream than the Synology
00:49:02 ◼ ► setup. The Drobo dream, for people who don't remember Drobo, was you buy this big box full of drives,
00:49:07 ◼ ► and whenever you need more storage, you add another drive of any size you feel like, and it just adds
00:49:17 ◼ ► Right. Well, that was the pitch, right? Because that appeals to consumers. Consumers aren't going
00:49:22 ◼ ► to buy fleets of things with giant hard drives that are like, I'm just going to buy as many drives as I
00:49:26 ◼ ► can afford, and later when I want more space, I'll buy another drive or whatever I can afford and stick
00:49:31 ◼ ► it in. And I don't have to have all the drives be the same size, or make subgroups, or make separate
00:49:36 ◼ ► VDEVs and add them to the ZFS RAID-Z pool and all that. Like, I don't want to think about that.
00:49:41 ◼ ► I just want to buy a drive for whatever amount of money I have and stick it in. Three years later,
00:49:45 ◼ ► do the same thing and stick it in. And I want data protection, whatever data protection I picked when
00:49:49 ◼ ► I set up this array, I want that data protection to be maintained as I add drives, and I don't care
00:49:53 ◼ ► what size they are. And that is not what ZFS delivers. ZFS wants you to add things in a more
00:50:00 ◼ ► regimented manner. It's not as flexible. When you add things, you can't always add any drive of any
00:50:06 ◼ ► size. Sometimes it does want you. You can't add, like, drives in pairs and add new things to your
00:50:12 ◼ ► pool. Like, there are ways to get some more flexibility than just, like, you have to replace
00:50:16 ◼ ► every drive like in traditional RAID. But it's more fidgety. But anyway, I do like ZFS. But then I
00:50:21 ◼ ► looked at the prices in QNAP stuff. It's just as expensive as Synology. So it's like, I mean,
00:50:25 ◼ ► maybe not as expensive. I think they have, like, better CPUs and more RAM for the same as Synology's
00:50:30 ◼ ► prices. But anyway, QNAP, if you're looking for alternative Synology, just looking at their product
00:50:34 ◼ ► offerings, they seem to be the closest thing to Synology that I've seen. Their software stack
00:50:40 ◼ ► really does look like they're copying everything that Synology has in a good way. And they have the
00:50:46 ◼ ► option of using ZFS. You don't have to use ZFS. You can use plain old RAID. You can use ZFS. Anyway,
00:50:51 ◼ ► I was impressed with how far QNAP has come. Also, some of the recommendations people had for us were
00:50:55 ◼ ► Ugreen, which is the company that I just think of as making, like, USB hubs and Ethernet hubs and stuff
00:51:00 ◼ ► like that. But apparently they make NAS hardware now, too. Unraid is a software solution. Then
00:51:04 ◼ ► there's FreeNAS, TrueNAS. There's tons of options for you out there, depending on how much stuff you
00:51:08 ◼ ► want to do. But QNAP looked like the same type of solution as Synology in that, like, you give us
00:51:13 ◼ ► money, we take care of everything. Like, it's not DIY. It's not, like, you can get down nitty gritty and
00:51:17 ◼ ► do, like, fancy stuff with ZFS. But if you just want to buy, like, an appliance and use an interface to
00:51:22 ◼ ► set it up, QNAP will do that for you. And it does have features that Synology doesn't because it has
00:51:27 ◼ ► Cool. That's all very useful. And I appreciate all the feedback from everyone. But I have news. As of
00:51:36 ◼ ► about 24 hours from now, or thereabouts, Synology has mostly backtracked on their complete refusal to
00:51:44 ◼ ► work with third party drives. So that Synology Europe thing we had last episode was right.
00:51:48 ◼ ► Yeah, but YouTube put a stray YouTube comment from the official Synology at Europe account.
00:51:53 ◼ ► Who'd thunk it? So Synology released DiskStation Manager 7.3 DSM as their, you know, like, operating
00:51:59 ◼ ► system, if you will. And their press release reads, Synology is currently collaborating closely with
00:52:04 ◼ ► third party drive manufacturers to accelerate the testing and verification of additional storage drives
00:52:08 ◼ ► and will announce more updates as soon as possible. In the meantime, 25 model year DiskStation Plus
00:52:12 ◼ ► value in J-Series running DSM 7.3 will support the installation and storage pool creation of non
00:52:18 ◼ ► validated third party drives. This provides greater flexibility while Synology continues to expand the
00:52:23 ◼ ► lineup of officially verified drives that meet long term reliability standards. However, the creation
00:52:28 ◼ ► of M.2 based storage pool and cache still requires drives from the HCL. I have no idea what that means,
00:52:33 ◼ ► but on the hardware compatibility list. So basically the asterisk, it was like what it was a footnote
00:52:39 ◼ ► one saying, you know, we'll support the creation of non validated third party drives footnote. And the footnote
00:52:44 ◼ ► was, yeah, except for M.21. So there's more detail from this SpaceRex YouTube channel here.
00:52:49 ◼ ► All right. So from SpaceRex YouTube, uh, the M.2 NVMe restrictions are still in place due to the highly
00:52:55 ◼ ► diverse M.2 NVMe market in wide variation. We've seen many instances where consumer grade M.2 SSDs with
00:53:01 ◼ ► low endurance performance and quality combined with poor firmware implementations have directly
00:53:04 ◼ ► contributed to system instability and data loss. And that's directly from Synology. This was the SpaceRex,
00:53:09 ◼ ► uh, YouTuber asking Synology, hey, what's the deal? Why can't we do NVM? Why can't we use, uh,
00:53:13 ◼ ► arbitrary third party NVMe flash drives? And that's Synology explanation. Still only the approved list
00:53:20 ◼ ► for those. And then Lee Hutchinson at ArtsTechnica writes, we asked Synology whether the requirements
00:53:25 ◼ ► will also be lifted from previous generation Synology products. And the answer to that question
00:53:28 ◼ ► appears to be a no. Quote, this change only affects the 25 series models, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
00:53:33 ◼ ► Models in the XS Plus line are considered a business or enterprise model and will remain under
00:53:38 ◼ ► the current HCL policy for our business lines. Synology explained. Yeah. HCL is not hydrochloric
00:53:43 ◼ ► acid, but, uh, hardware compatibility list. So this is, this is why I said they mostly backtracked.
00:53:47 ◼ ► They're, they're trying to have their cake and eat it too. They're like their enterprise product
00:53:51 ◼ ► lines as XS Plus line, still only Synology validated drives old pre 2025 products. And that is
00:53:58 ◼ ► Synology products that don't end in 25 because all their remarks like DS725, DS225. Those are all 2025
00:54:05 ◼ ► products. Uh, if you have a product that's not a 2025 product, you're not included in this either.
00:54:10 ◼ ► Uh, it's only exactly what the press release says, which is the, um, only running DSM 7.3 and it's the
00:54:17 ◼ ► plus value in J series, which I imagine are what consumers buy. Right. So they're trying to say
00:54:22 ◼ ► enterprises with lots of money. We still want to sell you overpriced storage because that's what
00:54:27 ◼ ► every storage company enterprise does. Like it's how, you know, these big companies make a lot of their
00:54:31 ◼ ► money, but for consumers, cause you all got mad at us, we will let you do this, but only if you buy
00:54:36 ◼ ► a new 2025 thing, or you have one of the really older ones, if you got caught in that middle thing,
00:54:41 ◼ ► too bad for you, which is still kind of crappy. Like I'm saying, like, if you're gonna, if you're
00:54:45 ◼ ► gonna walk this back, walk it back all the way, they want, they're walking it back halfway, which
00:54:48 ◼ ► is better than nothing, but still not great. Yeah. I I'm not sure what to make of this. That
00:54:54 ◼ ► is probably enough to make me consider going. I'm saying going back as though I've left, but
00:55:00 ◼ ► you know, whenever the time comes that I replaced my like two year old model, uh, this, if this
00:55:04 ◼ ► continues for the home market, I'd probably stick with astrology. Uh, but, uh, it's certainly
00:55:15 ◼ ► Yeah. A lot of the YouTubers, a lot of the various people reporting on this news are like,
00:55:18 ◼ ► uh, in typically, typically YouTube fashion would come right out and say, this is because their sales
00:55:25 ◼ ► got destroyed when they did this. And it's like, do you have their sales numbers? Like citation needed
00:55:30 ◼ ► as they say in Wikipedia, like probably their sales went down. We know that there was lots of people
00:55:35 ◼ ► complaining about it, but like, they just definitively say it's because their sales were, you know, in
00:55:40 ◼ ► the toilet. It's like, well, you know, like I would like to see something. Anyway, uh, they, the bottom line
00:55:46 ◼ ► is they want to sell to enterprises. Everyone who sells to enterprises makes you buy their storage.
00:55:51 ◼ ► Like you buy like EMC or like Dell owns them now, or all the other big, like I had to deal with all
00:55:56 ◼ ► these vendors and doing like a, uh, uh, what do you call it? Vendor, uh, evaluation for lots of big
00:56:02 ◼ ► storage vendors for a big storage project back when I had a jobby job. So I got to hear all their sales
00:56:06 ◼ ► pitches and they all want to sell you just the most expensive hard drives you've ever seen in your
00:56:11 ◼ ► entire life. Like it's like Apple with RAM and storage, like storage. That's where all their
00:56:16 ◼ ► margins come from. And you can see why Synology wants to do that too. Their mistake was thinking
00:56:20 ◼ ► they could also apply that to that, to people who want to have like a two drive NAS in their
00:56:24 ◼ ► basement or something. And that has not worked out. So I think QNAP is probably reaching,
00:56:28 ◼ ► reaping the benefits. Um, I would definitely, uh, consider trying them, but now that Synology is
00:56:33 ◼ ► backtracking mostly on this. And if I ever buy no one, it will be a 2025 model or later. I'm like,
00:56:44 ◼ ► quick bit of, I guess it's sort of kind of follow-up. Sorry, John, uh, about the AirPods
00:56:48 ◼ ► Pro 3. After hearing the discussion about, oh, you should try the bigger tips. I thought to myself,
00:56:53 ◼ ► you know what? I should try the bigger tips. What's it going to hurt? And even though I didn't feel
00:56:57 ◼ ► like the tips were not snug in my ears, I thought, let me give it a whirl. And I've tried the bigger
00:57:02 ◼ ► tips, which I think there's only one step larger, if I'm not mistaken, in the box from what they have
00:57:08 ◼ ► mounted on the, on the, on the device. And you can option into one size larger, if I'm not mistaken.
00:57:13 ◼ ► And I tried that and I got to tell you, they fit, they fit just fine. And who'd have thunk it? The
00:57:20 ◼ ► ANC got just a touch better. I wouldn't say it was bad before. I wouldn't say it's night and day better
00:57:24 ◼ ► than the AirPods Pro 2, but it's definitely a touch better. So even if you don't think you need the
00:57:28 ◼ ► bigger tips, give it a shot. Can't hurt. Just like Marco was saying earlier. Uh, Marco, you have some
00:57:34 ◼ ► case updates for us. I do. Yeah. Um, so in the intervening time, last episode of this one,
00:57:39 ◼ ► um, I have tried three new iPhone 17 pro cases. Um, as I wait for my Suti leather back to be
00:57:47 ◼ ► delivered ever. I don't, I don't even think it has shipped yet. I think I need to email them.
00:57:50 ◼ ► Oh, speaking of your leather back, by the way, did you see that person who had your leather back and
00:57:53 ◼ ► just cut the top off of it? I meant to say that when you were talking about cutting the,
00:58:04 ◼ ► but you were, you were using a, a, a leather back for an earlier phone. Oh, right. Sticking it on
00:58:09 ◼ ► your 17. This person took the, the leather back for the 17 pro that you returned and just cut the top
00:58:15 ◼ ► off of that one. I'm done rebuying things. I've returned. I don't want to, I just, I just wanted to
00:58:20 ◼ ► know if you saw it cause it like it looked pretty good. Again, I don't know how well, if maybe those
00:58:24 ◼ ► little things lifted up, I'm trying to find, I mean, they seem to have a lot better Dremel skills than
00:58:28 ◼ ► I have. Um, so there, there's looked a lot better than I think mine would, but there it is. Oh,
00:58:32 ◼ ► Omar Shaheen. Um, yeah, it's looking pretty good. I mean, I, again, I don't know if those little
00:58:37 ◼ ► pointy bits, I'll send you the link to it. I don't know if those little pointy bits might catch under
00:58:40 ◼ ► your finger or whatever, but it just, that's, I immediately thought of that when you're talking
00:58:43 ◼ ► about chopping up your things last time. And I forgot to mention it. Yeah. I'm hoping the
00:58:46 ◼ ► Sudi leather case comes also like what I'm, what I'm also hoping to see. I don't know if this
00:58:50 ◼ ► will exist cause it seems like the, the market for like leather magnetically attached phone
00:58:57 ◼ ► backs that don't have any side protection seems like a pretty small market. I mean, it is kind
00:59:01 ◼ ► of a weird thing. Like people usually buy cases for protection, not back grip, but true. And
00:59:05 ◼ ► I, I also, I did try, um, I found some Amazon seller for like $7. They were selling this, some
00:59:11 ◼ ► kind of like gel, uh, back, like, Oh my, like a, like a stick on decal that you'd stick on
00:59:18 ◼ ► the back. Jelly shoes for your, uh, phone. It was horrific. Um, I did have from, from my,
00:59:26 ◼ ► uh, Casey goose trip, I did have just a, a cheap clear case, um, from Torras, T O R R A S
00:59:32 ◼ ► from Amazon. It was, it was relatively inexpensive. I think like under $20. Um, and it's like a,
00:59:38 ◼ ► a basic clear TPU case, no MagSafe support. Um, so it does, you know, it did kind of ruin
00:59:45 ◼ ► MagSafe strength. Um, but it was cheap and it would, it was, it would come the next morning.
00:59:49 ◼ ► So I tried it. It was fine. Um, the only, the only thing I don't like about the, about the
00:59:54 ◼ ► Torras clear case is that the lip around the camera plateau is very tall. And so it, which
01:00:01 ◼ ► makes sense. Like it, it helps it stand off the table better, but it kind of protrudes and
01:00:07 ◼ ► makes like an outline on your pocket and your jeans. Like you can see the rim around the camera
01:00:12 ◼ ► mesa as its own outline. And I didn't, I didn't love that, but it can't beat the value. Yeah.
01:00:17 ◼ ► On that topic of the, of the having tall rings around the mesa, I've seen a lot of people complaining
01:00:21 ◼ ► about this and I don't think people have, have thought it through. They're like, uh, they made
01:00:25 ◼ ► this big full width camera mesa plateau thing, but the cameras still stick out from it. So when I put
01:00:30 ◼ ► it on the table, it still rocks because the cameras stick out, uh, you know, more on the side
01:00:38 ◼ ► why didn't they just make it flat all the way across? If there was, first of all, the cameras
01:00:42 ◼ ► are not sticking out just for the hell of it. That's how deep they are. That's what they can
01:00:46 ◼ ► fit. There's the screen on the other side of them. Those are the cameras. Believe me, there
01:00:49 ◼ ► is no empty space that they're wasting inside there. And given that, if you made the iconic
01:00:55 ◼ ► plateau, even with the tops of the camera lenses all the way across, that would look like this
01:01:02 ◼ ► case that you're describing, it would be huge. Like you don't realize how prominent that sort
01:01:07 ◼ ► of five head would be to borrow a phrase from, uh, the flop house. It's just, it would just be
01:01:12 ◼ ► gigantic and granted they could probably put more stuff in there or whatever, but like,
01:01:15 ◼ ► I don't think you want that. Like, it's a shame that the camera lenses stick out as far as they do,
01:01:20 ◼ ► but you don't want the whole plateau to be even with the tips of the cameras. Cause that would just
01:01:28 ◼ ► Well, interesting that you mentioned that though. Um, there actually is a slightly better solution,
01:01:32 ◼ ► but I'll get to that in a second. So I also tried, um, John's favorite, the bull strap case with the
01:01:38 ◼ ► open bottom. Um, this is a nice leather case. Um, I got the black one. It looks very nice on the phone
01:01:45 ◼ ► and with the open bottom, you still get to see the nice orange strip of your phone on the bottom,
01:01:49 ◼ ► which I found to be a nice feature. Um, I don't like the way bull strap partially covers up the camera
01:01:56 ◼ ► mesa. Um, I like when cases leave the mesa itself, like the full round rect shape and don't try to
01:02:02 ◼ ► like just leave the cameras open in a square and then have like, you know, the two holes for the
01:02:05 ◼ ► two things on the, on the right. Although, uh, in this particular phone, because as we noted on an
01:02:10 ◼ ► earlier episode, that sharp edge around the camera plateau is the place where the anodization will
01:02:19 ◼ ► does. And the bull strap, the way the case like rises up around that, it doesn't create any sharp
01:02:26 ◼ ► or like, you know, blunt edges. Everything is rounded. Yeah. That's one of the things I like
01:02:31 ◼ ► about my 16 pro bull strap cases that the thing around the camera is kind of smooth and slanted
01:02:37 ◼ ► and leather. It's not a plastic frame, a metal flame, a champ chamfered metal frame, you know,
01:02:42 ◼ ► like lots of cases do that. And I don't like feeling that on the back of the phone. I like it to be smooth
01:02:47 ◼ ► up there. My wife's got the bull strap case too. And I don't like how it looks when it covers that
01:02:50 ◼ ► the fold with plateau, but I do like the protection it provides and the fact that it's leather like in
01:02:55 ◼ ► more places. Yeah. Honestly, the look, it looks like a car bra. It really does. Like going back
01:02:59 ◼ ► to our very first podcast together, like it looks exactly like a car bra, but it has the opposite
01:03:04 ◼ ► because it will protect the thing under it instead of getting grit under there and causing abrasions and
01:03:08 ◼ ► having it all. Yeah, but it's, I, I, I wish it was more open, but anyway, otherwise the bull strap case
01:03:14 ◼ ► is pretty nice. The leather feels fantastic. It's a great quality leather. Um, even like after only a
01:03:20 ◼ ► couple of days of use, it, it already feels amazing. Um, the black I think is a really nice color combo
01:03:25 ◼ ► with the orange. Uh, and overall I'm very happy with the bull strap except that the sleep wake button
01:03:32 ◼ ► is not a good button feel. Yeah. The buttons aren't great this year on the whole strap case.
01:03:37 ◼ ► Yeah. That, and that really hurts it. Like it's, it's the kind of thing like, you know, you push
01:03:41 ◼ ► sleep wake and like you think it pushed, but you don't really, you don't really feel that click the
01:03:45 ◼ ► way you do with a good button. So like double clicking it to like for Apple pay or something
01:03:48 ◼ ► like it feels awful. You also might have a, you might have a bad one. Like there, I think the
01:03:53 ◼ ► quality control of the buttons is variable because again, the buttons on my bull strap case
01:03:56 ◼ ► from the 16 pro they're okay. My wife's buttons I think are worse than mine, but they're still
01:04:01 ◼ ► clicky. So, I mean, I don't think you want to return it or whatever, but like, no, I don't want
01:04:05 ◼ ► to go through that, but their buttons, like something I've heard about the Apple case. Was it the Apple
01:04:09 ◼ ► cases? They said like the buttons are much improved this year or whatever, like the tech woven
01:04:13 ◼ ► good buttons versus bad buttons is there's a wide gap with cases and it's very difficult to tell what
01:04:18 ◼ ► you're getting by looking at the pictures on the website. Yeah. Apple tends to have the best
01:04:21 ◼ ► buttons. Um, like that that's just the reality of their cases. Like if you want all the clear cases,
01:04:26 ◼ ► like the buttons on a clear case, Apple clear case compared to the buttons on an Apple, like,
01:04:30 ◼ ► like the tech woven or fine woven, huge difference because the clear case kind of has to be like all
01:04:35 ◼ ► one thing and they're not great. That's true. Yeah. Yeah. The clear case, it's not nearly as good as
01:04:39 ◼ ► the others, but, um, yeah, overall bull strap best looking case I've seen, uh, best feeling leather I
01:04:46 ◼ ► have found in a long time in a case. Uh, but the buttons are not amazing. Open bottom is great. Uh,
01:04:51 ◼ ► covered up plateau is less great. So it's kind of a mixed bag, but overall a very strong,
01:04:55 ◼ ► showing. Uh, and then finally I have for the last few days been using the peak design case.
01:05:01 ◼ ► I got that in a couple of days ago. So I've been trying that out. I've had great success with these
01:05:05 ◼ ► in previous phones and the peak design. If you've ever used the peak design phone case,
01:05:10 ◼ ► it's the same case. It's like, they just keep making the same thing over and over again,
01:05:15 ◼ ► but that's a good thing. It's a good case. Um, I really like the peak design case. There's a couple
01:05:21 ◼ ► things about that I don't, but mostly it's a very positive. Uh, so first of all, I think it looks
01:05:26 ◼ ► fantastic. Like this is, this is the material that tech woven wishes it was, but it's not,
01:05:31 ◼ ► I don't know why. Um, but peak design material, um, they do have a couple of material choices.
01:05:35 ◼ ► I still get like the gray one that has like the original, like nice gray weave. Um, the other
01:05:41 ◼ ► choices are getting poor reviews. Um, so I would say be careful with those, but if you get like the,
01:05:45 ◼ ► like the woven texture ones, it's the same old texture they've always had. And it's great.
01:05:49 ◼ ► Um, the rim around the camera plateau is a little bit, uh, pokey, but not nearly as bad as the cheap
01:05:57 ◼ ► case. Um, and it doesn't stick up quite as far overall. So it's, it's overall like a nicer ratio
01:06:03 ◼ ► for that. Um, you, you do slightly see the outline in a pocket, but it's very, it's much more subtle.
01:06:09 ◼ ► Um, I love having the little square indentation on the back to kind of put your finger in as you're like
01:06:14 ◼ ► resting the phone in your, in your grip. It kind of serves as like an inverse pop socket in that way.
01:06:19 ◼ ► Um, it does have a covered up bottom, but it does not obstruct like the speakers in any meaningful way,
01:06:25 ◼ ► you know, charging cables, even like the thick anchor cables go in it just fine. Um, the buttons
01:06:30 ◼ ► feel great. Peak design buttons are almost as good, maybe even as good as Apple's buttons. They're very,
01:06:37 ◼ ► very good. They have a camera control button this year, um, which is also sort of the bull strap,
01:06:42 ◼ ► by the way, both of those camera control buttons are very, very good. Um, the Torres cheap clear
01:06:47 ◼ ► case does not have a camera control button. It just has a cutout. Um, but yeah, bull strap and peak
01:06:51 ◼ ► design, great camera control buttons. They feel good. They're easy to push. They click in nicely.
01:06:56 ◼ ► Um, so overall peak design is good. The only, the main downside of the peak design case, uh,
01:07:01 ◼ ► is that it's just bulky. Uh, and that's just, their cases have always been this way. It's, it's a trade
01:07:06 ◼ ► off. It is not super slim. It is not super lightweight. It does cover up most of the orange of the phone,
01:07:12 ◼ ► although you do see the entire camera plateau, which is nice. Um, so it's a mixed bag. The peak design
01:07:17 ◼ ► case, it's, it's like the, you know, the, the mid-sized SUV of phone cases. Like it will,
01:07:24 ◼ ► it will take you anywhere you need to go. It is overall, if you're going to have one case on your
01:07:29 ◼ ► phone all year round and you want it to be, you know, relatively protective, you want it to be able
01:07:35 ◼ ► to get wet unlike leather and still be okay. Like the peak design case is a great choice.
01:07:40 ◼ ► Does it not have, does it not have a lip, uh, around the screen that sticks out farther than
01:07:44 ◼ ► the screen? It does. It just, it's not very tall. I mean, it's a pretty shallow. I was just looking at
01:07:49 ◼ ► some of the reviews and some for the older cases and they're complaining that there's the lip isn't
01:07:52 ◼ ► enough to essentially, like if you put your phone face down, that your screen will actually be
01:07:55 ◼ ► touching it versus like, no, the bull strap case, for instance, a grain of salt could very easily
01:08:00 ◼ ► be on the table and not touch your screen. If you put a screen face down on the bull strap case.
01:08:07 ◼ ► it, it does have a raised lip. It's not a very tall raised lip. Um, but it, it definitely does
01:08:12 ◼ ► have it here. I'll pop it into the bull strap now. Let's see. Stop taking your phone and out of cases.
01:08:15 ◼ ► You're upsetting me. I, I get my phone to be used. I don't care if it gets like minor little dust here
01:08:21 ◼ ► and there. No, it's every time you put it in and out of the case, you're risking, you're stretching
01:08:25 ◼ ► out the case, you're making the fit worse and you're risking, probably not risking bending your
01:08:29 ◼ ► phone, but I would say the bull strap is about the same depth. Maybe the bull strap might be a
01:08:33 ◼ ► a little bit taller ridge around it, but not, it's not a meaningful difference. Um, but yeah,
01:08:38 ◼ ► overall I would say bull strap for formal occasions, peak design for general utility and, uh, and you
01:08:45 ◼ ► know, a cheap, clear case if you want, you know, clear view of the phone. Um, but ultimately I'm still
01:08:50 ◼ ► waiting for a good leather back and I still like, you know, kind of more like minimal cases than these.
01:08:55 ◼ ► Um, but for now this is good. Um, the peak design also for whatever it's worth, if you have any needs
01:09:00 ◼ ► for a strong mount on something, like, um, if you have like a bike, you want to mount your phone on
01:09:06 ◼ ► your bike. Um, peak design makes mounts like that for the, and they, they latch in way stronger than
01:09:11 ◼ ► magnets. They latch into like the, the hole in the back of the case, the square hole. And it's like a
01:09:16 ◼ ► physical latching mechanism. So it's, it's much stronger than anything magnetic. That being said,
01:09:20 ◼ ► for whatever it's worth, the peak design case also has by far the strongest mag safe strength I've
01:09:28 ◼ ► ever seen in a case. Like when you put this on the mag safe pocket, when you want to take it off the
01:09:34 ◼ ► puck, you got to pull hard, which is actually really nice in a lot of cases. Like I tried earlier in my
01:09:41 ◼ ► car mount, I tried to like jiggle it off the car mount to see like, will it fall off amount? And the
01:09:47 ◼ ► entire mount moved before the phone did. Like it, it's a very strong magnetic connection on the back
01:09:53 ◼ ► of the peak design case, way more than the bull strap and any other case I've ever had way more
01:09:57 ◼ ► than the, than the naked phone even. Uh, and so if that's, if that's a relevant thing to you, again,
01:10:02 ◼ ► the peak design will probably win that comparison as well. So overall, it's a great overall case.
01:10:07 ◼ ► It's just a bit bulky, but that's kind of the nature of it. And otherwise it's very, very good.
01:10:16 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, like, like last year, I'm probably going to change it up throughout the year as,
01:10:21 ◼ ► as you know, seasons and needs change. Uh, but overall I'm, I'm happy with what I have found,
01:10:30 ◼ ► I'm so sorry. Uh, for what it's worth, I got a considerable amount of amusement, uh, with Aaron and
01:10:39 ◼ ► Marco tag teaming me on making fun of my blue phone and saying how much I should return it and
01:10:44 ◼ ► get an orange phone. Oh my God. I stand by, I stand by my blue phone. That's sometimes purple,
01:10:51 ◼ ► Every time Casey referred to the color of his phone on the trip, it was resignation and slight
01:10:58 ◼ ► displeasure. And we're like, you're within the return window. You obviously don't like the color
01:11:08 ◼ ► Well, but I don't think I want, I genuinely don't think I want the orange phone. I just
01:11:11 ◼ ► doesn't want to go through the phone transfer process. Also that very much that. And I mean,
01:11:16 ◼ ► there are definitely times where I really, really do like the look of this and the color of this,
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01:13:23 ◼ ► Let's talk iOS 26 first impressions. And John, it seems like you would like to start. So please do.
01:13:32 ◼ ► Cause I didn't, I didn't run iOS 26. You two have had it obviously for your betas of your apps and
01:13:38 ◼ ► everything like that, but I was avoiding it because I had heard terrible things about it. And you know,
01:13:42 ◼ ► I'm like, I'll wait till the release version comes out. Oh, quick update. By the way, the 26.1 beta two
01:13:48 ◼ ► and Tahoe beta two have made tethering less broken. All right. It will. Once you connect now,
01:13:56 ◼ ► it will stay connected. But the, the initial process of connecting now takes like three times longer
01:14:02 ◼ ► because it can get into a state where the little circle next to the, you know, Marco's iPhone 17,
01:14:07 ◼ ► like the tethering circle in the menu is lit up, but then the menu bar item still shows like no wifi
01:14:14 ◼ ► and you have to like deselect it and then reselect it for it to actually connect and make you connected to
01:14:20 ◼ ► the tethering. So it's still a mess, but at least like once you are connected, at least it stays
01:14:25 ◼ ► connected. So it's less broken, but still broken. Cool. Yeah. So I installed, I installed iOS 26 when the
01:14:32 ◼ ► release one came out. I don't have the beta that Marco was just referring to it. And I'm not on the beta
01:14:36 ◼ ► train. I'm just on the release train. So I'm running 26.0. Uh, and again, I've, I've been
01:14:42 ◼ ► using Tahoe since it was released in all the betas. So I'm familiar with how that looks and I don't like
01:14:46 ◼ ► it and how it works and I don't like it, but whatever, got to deal with it with my apps.
01:14:50 ◼ ► But I was 26. Like I'd, I'd seen all the screenshots. I'd heard YouTube talk about it. I heard Marco talk
01:14:55 ◼ ► about it at length and his experience with his apps and everything, but I didn't really quite know what
01:14:59 ◼ ► to expect other than I would, I knew that I wasn't going to like how it looked cause I'd seen how it
01:15:04 ◼ ► looked. Um, so now having used it, I don't know, for a couple of weeks now, uh, here's the few additional
01:15:12 ◼ ► things I have to say about it on top of what you two have already said about it during the betas, uh, to find
01:15:18 ◼ ► at least two nice things to say about iOS 26. Wow. Okay. Um, first, um, in previous versions of iOS,
01:15:33 ◼ ► various, uh, various things, especially in like top navigation and stuff like that, like the back
01:15:40 ◼ ► button or like, um, you know, I don't know the, the, the thing that you hit to close a sheet or
01:15:46 ◼ ► whatever, the touch areas may have been the same size as they are in 26, but 26 due to its different
01:15:54 ◼ ► style where it draws, like if you have like an X button, it draws a circle around it. Or if you have
01:15:58 ◼ ► like a toolbar, it draws like an outline around it, the touch areas in iOS 26 look bigger. I don't know
01:16:05 ◼ ► if they are bigger, but they look bigger because visually used to have like the word back and a little
01:16:09 ◼ ► left-facing chevron. And I'm sure the touch area for that was probably huge, but you didn't see that
01:16:13 ◼ ► because you just saw like the background that it's on and you saw the text and you felt like you had
01:16:17 ◼ ► to tap the text and the text can be small. Like the capital B is big, but the ACK is small and you're
01:16:21 ◼ ► like, do I have to hit that? No, like the touch area was probably huge, huge, but it felt smaller
01:16:26 ◼ ► with the big actual outlines around buttons, like the big circle around the X or the big circle around a
01:16:32 ◼ ► chevron or the big circle or a capsule shape around like a toolbar at the top or a checkbox or whatever
01:16:38 ◼ ► or a checkmark or whatever. Those touch targets feel bigger to me. And I like that. Number two,
01:16:45 ◼ ► second nice thing. In earlier versions of iOS in the post iOS 7 era, when there was any kind of state
01:16:54 ◼ ► change on touch, like you touch that back button, you touch the little X thing or whatever, it was
01:17:00 ◼ ► pretty subtle. Maybe the word back would change from light blue to dark blue or some other kind
01:17:05 ◼ ► of highlighting type thing. iOS 26, usually the entire background of the thing that you hit does
01:17:13 ◼ ► some stupid glowy effect, right? But it's not, you won't miss it. Like it's sitting there and when you
01:17:19 ◼ ► touch it, it like, I don't know if HDR lights up, but it like lights up and like this little transition
01:17:24 ◼ ► and glow goes through it and there's an animation or whatever, but that happens as soon as you touch it.
01:17:29 ◼ ► And imagine having things react to you, activating them is a good thing in UI design. One of the
01:17:36 ◼ ► things that we kind of sort of lost in the iOS 7 transition because that became so much more
01:17:41 ◼ ► subtle. So those are my two nice things to say on iOS 26. Oh no. The touch targets feel like they're
01:17:48 ◼ ► bigger even if they're not and more things that are buttons like that are button-like in the UI,
01:17:54 ◼ ► make it clear when you hit them immediately. As soon as your finger hits them, they do their highlight
01:18:00 ◼ ► thing. Everything else is about it as what we've said before. And in particular, like I felt like
01:18:05 ◼ ► doing a blog post about this because I feel like the, like the three, like the three main sins of the
01:18:10 ◼ ► 26 redesign, not just iOS, but across all the platforms are like, uh, how it looks like subjective stuff, which is like
01:18:17 ◼ ► you might like it, you might not, but I don't. So that's just the subjective thing. Um, moving everything away from the
01:18:23 ◼ ► edges, like, and you know, the, the whole, like not having things go edge to edge and having them be inset in capsules and
01:18:30 ◼ ► whatever the third one is that I put in my notes documented. They can't remember now, but like, um,
01:18:34 ◼ ► like those are like, there, there are a few fundamental, Oh, and the third one, I remember
01:18:39 ◼ ► it immediately. Uh, just showing stuff through behind, you know, like I can, you know, why do I need
01:18:44 ◼ ► to see through this control to the content that's behind it or whatever? Right. Those are the three
01:18:47 ◼ ► main sins as far as I'm concerned of the entire OS redesign. And we keep thinking like when they come
01:18:52 ◼ ► up with the 20th anniversary phone or the folding phone with a wraparound edge to edge screen, this,
01:19:00 ◼ ► you'd have to do is change a safe area insets with the old design and it would make just as much
01:19:04 ◼ ► sense. Like it's no, you don't need them to be floating lozenges. You don't need to see the
01:19:07 ◼ ► content through them. You don't need to see the content behind them. But yeah, those are the three
01:19:11 ◼ ► main things that I object to this entire OS design. I think it's ugly. Your mileage will vary,
01:19:16 ◼ ► but just subjectively, I think it's not attractive. I think in, you know, in setting everything off of
01:19:21 ◼ ► the margins and making them floating and having to have margins around all the buttons,
01:19:24 ◼ ► waste space and is bad. Uh, and the content that, and it makes problems with the content being able to be
01:19:30 ◼ ► seen, not underneath the controls, but around where there are no controls. And then finally
01:19:34 ◼ ► having the controls show content that's literally underneath them is a terrible mistake. And
01:19:37 ◼ ► those are the three big ones. There's, there's a lot of smaller nitpicks to pick, but, uh, nothing
01:19:42 ◼ ► about using the iOS 26 has changed my mind about any of that. It's just as bad as I thought it would
01:19:47 ◼ ► be much like Tahoe. Like I said about Tahoe, you get used to it. It's fine. Like it's not a big deal.
01:19:53 ◼ ► I said this from like day one on Tahoe. Like I hate how it looks. I think it's incredibly stupid,
01:19:57 ◼ ► but, but it's, it's fine. You survive. It's not the end of the world. It, it, it could be worse.
01:20:02 ◼ ► Right. Um, and, and this is coming from someone who doesn't even like how it looks. And I feel that
01:20:06 ◼ ► way about iOS 26. Now in iOS 26, I have been, I'm still am and have been trying to like, just leave it
01:20:11 ◼ ► on the defaults. Cause I didn't want to be like, Oh, day one, I'm putting them reduced transparency.
01:20:15 ◼ ► I'm putting on like, I just want to use it like, like it shipped just so I have a legit
01:20:19 ◼ ► experience from it. And so far I'm mostly sticking with that. There are all sorts of situations where
01:20:24 ◼ ► things are legible on the screen. And like, I, I basically got burned out on those before the
01:20:29 ◼ ► thing actually shipped because we've seen so many of them, but they're real. They come up like in
01:20:33 ◼ ► particular when the bloomy way on day one was like, if you take a screenshot on iOS 26 and then you look
01:20:39 ◼ ► at that screenshot and the stupid photos app with the stupid iOS 26 design, guess what?
01:20:44 ◼ ► The screenshot, which is a picture of your phone screen that has like the time at the top on your
01:20:48 ◼ ► battery shows right underneath the actual time on your screen and the battery when the screenshot is
01:20:53 ◼ ► shown full screen. And why? Because the photos app has a completely transparent status bar that shows
01:21:00 ◼ ► the photo underneath it. So you get to see the time you get to see what the time was in the screenshot
01:21:04 ◼ ► exactly superimposed on top of the actual time. And it just scrambles that whole top of the screen
01:21:08 ◼ ► looks, it looks ridiculous. Like I just, I can't even believe that they shipped something. This was
01:21:13 ◼ ► so dumb, but in, in the grand scheme of things, when that happens, I, you pinch and you can see
01:21:18 ◼ ► what time it really is. And you know, like there are always ways around it. It's not the end of the
01:21:22 ◼ ► world. It's fine. Your phone will be fine. And practically speaking, I still haven't turned on
01:21:26 ◼ ► reduced transparency. I just deal with, cause I think it looks even uglier with reduced transparency.
01:21:32 ◼ ► Well, also 26.0 has some pretty bad bugs with reduced transparency, especially in dark mode,
01:21:38 ◼ ► which I still continue to hear from customers every single day about. I cannot wait for 26.1 to be
01:21:51 ◼ ► Yeah. I wish they would fix these other obvious things that are just like fundamental to design,
01:21:55 ◼ ► but it's like, I don't know what they can do about it. But anyway, and then finally on the sort of
01:21:58 ◼ ► keeping the default front, there was lots of discussion on earlier episodes of YouTube going
01:22:02 ◼ ► back and forth about, uh, the whatever compact, uh, toolbar and safari at the bottom, right?
01:22:07 ◼ ► You can have it be two stack and you get the immediate one tap access back to your tabs and
01:22:11 ◼ ► stuff like that. I've left it on the default just to see if I could tolerate it. And the answer is,
01:22:16 ◼ ► yeah, I mostly can. I find myself using most often the double tap on the three dots button,
01:22:22 ◼ ► which is a nice gesture. I think they, uh, it seems like it might just be a consequence of like,
01:22:27 ◼ ► oh, actually you're just catching the animation in the process, but I think they programmed that in.
01:22:30 ◼ ► I think they made sure that a double tap, like, I don't think you're catching the in transition
01:22:34 ◼ ► animation of the pop-up menu. I think they're just registering a two tap gesture and doing it. So I
01:22:39 ◼ ► use double tap. Occasionally you swipe up from the little bar thingy. Um, and the reason I haven't
01:22:44 ◼ ► gone to the two, two stack is because I don't want more. I don't want it eating into even more of my
01:22:48 ◼ ► space. It's bad enough that I have that stupid, useless area on the bottom where there's nothing.
01:22:52 ◼ ► Then I have the floating toolbar. Uh, I don't want to waste more space with the second row. So
01:22:57 ◼ ► yeah, I've been using stock iOS 26. I've been surviving. It's fine except for all the parts
01:23:03 ◼ ► where it's ridiculous and stupid. And I hope that someone comes in and changes this in the next five
01:23:08 ◼ ► to 10 years. Wow. Cool. Uh, all right. So I was in Memphis when iOS 26 dropped and I was around a
01:23:20 ◼ ► bunch of all sack employees again, all sack, uh, what is it? American Lebanese, Syrian, uh, something,
01:23:26 ◼ ► something, I forget what it means. Uh, but anyways, it's a fundraising arm for, um, for St. Jude
01:23:30 ◼ ► and an associated charities. There you go. Uh, anyway, so I would ask these like regular people,
01:23:36 ◼ ► what do you think of iOS 26? And did they have it on their phone or you asked them to be your phone?
01:23:40 ◼ ► No, no, no. Their own phones. And I think, in fact, I think a lot of them had it pushed to their
01:23:45 ◼ ► work devices, which they were not happy about. Um, but anyways, for the most part, the reaction was
01:23:51 ◼ ► not great. And the only consistent feedback I got that was, that was specific was a lot of people really
01:24:00 ◼ ► hated the way messages looked, particularly the lack of like a opaque bar at the top. And at least one or
01:24:08 ◼ ► two people commented. And I have the same issue. A lot of times when I want to send a screenshot of
01:24:13 ◼ ► a messages conversation, I want to send like a comment or two, like, I don't need the whole damn
01:24:18 ◼ ► conversation. And what I would do in iOS 18 is if you're quick about it, you can scroll, scroll,
01:24:23 ◼ ► scroll so that the, there's a big gap between the last message in the keyboard. And that would
01:24:28 ◼ ► shove the last couple of messages all the way up to the top of the screen. Right. And then you can
01:24:33 ◼ ► take a screenshot and then crop that screenshot. So you've got the top of the screen, you've got the,
01:24:37 ◼ ► the header and the navigation bar with who you're talking to. And the last couple of text messages
01:24:42 ◼ ► sent. And I do that oftentimes to call attention to the specific context I want, or maybe it's,
01:24:47 ◼ ► you know, private information that I'm not trying to share above that, but I do this not
01:24:51 ◼ ► infrequently. And that is effectively impossible now because there is no top navigation bar in the
01:24:57 ◼ ► same sense that there wasn't 18. And what's there is translucent. And there were a handful of people
01:25:02 ◼ ► that really didn't like that. So then I get home, uh, I transfer Aaron's old phone to her new one, which
01:25:08 ◼ ► means she's getting iOS 26. And the first thing she said to me is how in the name of Zeus's butthole do I
01:25:14 ◼ ► close a tab in Safari? Not her words, but you get the idea. Um, how do I close a tab in Safari?
01:25:18 ◼ ► And I explained, well, you know, they really rejiggered everything and I tried it for a few
01:25:21 ◼ ► days. I couldn't handle it. I really did give it an honest thought, but I couldn't handle it.
01:25:25 ◼ ► And so, um, I, I went back to the best of my knowledge. She hasn't yet, which probably relates
01:25:31 ◼ ► to the fact that she has about 11 D billion tabs on her phone. It drives me bananas, but it works for her.
01:25:36 ◼ ► Um, but the one positive feedback that she gave me, most of it, she was like, meh, whatever. Uh,
01:25:42 ◼ ► but the positive bit of feedback she gave me, which I am also enjoying, but I think she's
01:25:45 ◼ ► gotten genuinely quite a lot of love out of is being able to see typing indicators in a group
01:25:52 ◼ ► text because it used to be, you could see, see a typing indicator when one-to-one chats, including
01:25:56 ◼ ► an RCS, but you can now get that in group chats on iMessage. And she was really, really into
01:26:01 ◼ ► that. And I thought that was interesting. So that's my feedback. Has Tiff had anything interesting
01:26:11 ◼ ► Fair enough. Yeah. My kids haven't gotten it yet, but they're going to get it with their
01:26:13 ◼ ► new phone. So it'll be interesting to see what they think. Because again, like I said, my daughter,
01:26:17 ◼ ► when I put Tahoe on quote unquote her laptop, which is not really hers. Um, wow. She did not
01:26:23 ◼ ► like it. She was like, no, no, don't want, don't want. I'm like, all right, well, you know,
01:26:27 ◼ ► then she's got a new laptop now that doesn't have Tahoe on it. And I had both my kids turn off
01:26:32 ◼ ► auto updates before Tahoe came out because they both expressed that they did not want it. So now
01:26:36 ◼ ► they don't have to get it. Uh, eventually they probably will. But anyway, uh, I bet they'll
01:26:41 ◼ ► probably be fine with it on their phone, but my, my daughter has complaints about a lot of things,
01:26:44 ◼ ► but eventually she gets over it. It's just like I said, I, this is a blog post that I almost made
01:26:49 ◼ ► like three times. So just those, those three things that apparently I need to write better in my notes
01:26:54 ◼ ► document of just like how it looks. I think it's ugly, uh, moving things in from the edges and the fact
01:26:59 ◼ ► that you can see through stuff. And those are the three like top level, top three sins of this
01:27:05 ◼ ► design. And they spread to all the OSs and they're just, they're bad ideas. They're just bad ideas.
01:27:11 ◼ ► And so, and we get to deal with them everywhere. And I mean, obviously the look, if you like the look,
01:27:23 ◼ ► I'm even more wary about the other OSs. Obviously, uh, like with the iPad, I mentioned,
01:27:27 ◼ ► we were talking about the beta is like, Oh, slide over is gone. That's like my main use
01:27:31 ◼ ► case for using my iPad as I watch full screen video. Cause it's like my little, my little
01:27:35 ◼ ► bedtime TV. I watch full screen video. And then I have social media apps and slide over. I'm
01:27:40 ◼ ► watching like some, you know, thing that I don't need to pay tons of attention to like some crappy
01:27:44 ◼ ► reality TV. And I have stuff in slide over slide over. Like my normal slide over apps I have
01:27:49 ◼ ► these days are, uh, Slack, Ivory and Tapestry. Tapestry is the thing I used to read Blue Sky most of the
01:27:56 ◼ ► time. Um, and it's nice. I got full screen video when I want to see something that slide over. I
01:28:02 ◼ ► slide it over. Uh, and if you swipe at the bottom of a slide over thing, you can cycle through which
01:28:07 ◼ ► thing you're seeing in slide over. So I can rotate through those, those things that I just said with
01:28:11 ◼ ► the slide over staying there, it just goes like a little bunch of cards. One, two, three, just goes
01:28:15 ◼ ► around in a cycle. Swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe, swipe. And when you're done with the slide over,
01:28:17 ◼ ► you just chuck it. You can flick the slide over to the other side of the screen. If you want on the left
01:28:20 ◼ ► and the right, you can hide it. That's slide over. And I heard that iPad OS 26 doesn't have it.
01:28:25 ◼ ► I'm like, I'm all, you know, I don't, the winning features are not for me. Like I don't, I don't use
01:28:30 ◼ ► my iPad in that way, but I'm like, I don't mind them. It should all be fine, but I want my slide over.
01:28:34 ◼ ► So everyone was all excited when iPad OS 26.1 beta came out and said, slide over's back, slide over's
01:28:39 ◼ ► back and iPad OS 26.1. Everyone's so excited about it. And so I foolishly updated from 18 to 26.1 beta
01:28:55 ◼ ► Well, so first of all, the thing that everybody knows is now you can only have one app in slide
01:28:59 ◼ ► over, which doesn't make any sense to me. Because like I said, when we talked about iPad OS 26,
01:29:03 ◼ ► slide over fits perfectly with the windowing system of iPad 26. It's just another way of dealing with
01:29:11 ◼ ► windows. It makes your windows tall and skinny, and it puts them off to the side where you can't
01:29:15 ◼ ► see them. And when you swipe in from the edge, they come. And when you cycle through it, like
01:29:18 ◼ ► it, it fits perfectly. There's tons of other things you do with windows and windowing mode
01:29:22 ◼ ► and iPad that are just like that. This is just another one. It's just another place where you
01:29:25 ◼ ► can make windows. You know, you got stage manager, you have the windowing thing, you got all sorts
01:29:28 ◼ ► of ways to deal with windows and iPad. And this fits the paradigm perfectly. It doesn't require
01:29:33 ◼ ► the windows to be anything but what they are. It's just an automated way to have them off
01:29:37 ◼ ► screen and then on screen and cycle through them. But they said, no, you can only have one of
01:29:40 ◼ ► these in 26.1 beta. I don't know why, but that's what they did. Second, they put a translucent sort
01:29:47 ◼ ► of liquid glass, whatever, outline around the thing, pretty big, like half a centimeter outline
01:29:53 ◼ ► around the thing to indicate that it's not like other windows, like it's going to behave differently,
01:29:57 ◼ ► you know. At least I'm guessing that's what it's for. So you don't think it's just a regular window
01:30:01 ◼ ► because it behaves like a slide over window. You can gesture to chuck it off the screen. You can gesture
01:30:05 ◼ ► to pull it on. That's not true. Other windows, it's true slider. Fine. It's an affordance. Didn't
01:30:10 ◼ ► need to be there before, but I don't object to it at all. The real thing they screwed up. Well, a couple
01:30:15 ◼ ► of things. One, if you remember the original iPhone, one of the cool features they had, and it's still
01:30:22 ◼ ► there to this day, is if you're doing something like, say, scrolling a web page, if especially back in
01:30:28 ◼ ► the olden days of the original iPhone, not a lot of websites were updated for mobile, as they say.
01:30:34 ◼ ► They were just regular websites that would render on your iPhone, and sometimes the text would be real
01:30:37 ◼ ► small, and you'd pinch a zoom, blah, blah, blah, but they weren't like sort of mobile savvy.
01:30:43 ◼ ► Yeah, exactly. I said I needed a website to test this on, and I immediately went to Daring Fireball.
01:30:48 ◼ ► Because he hasn't updated his website. And here's the key thing. When you have a sort of a
01:30:52 ◼ ► non-mobile savvy website, or any kind of content, any kind of content on your phone screen
01:30:56 ◼ ► that you can scroll up and down and left and right. There's more to the left, there's more to the right,
01:31:01 ◼ ► there's more up, there's more down. This can be an image, this can be whatever, but very often non-mobile
01:31:04 ◼ ► savvy web pages are like this, right? But what the iPhone would do from day one is if it sensed that
01:31:10 ◼ ► you were trying to scroll vertically, it would lock you into like a rail vertically. And even if as you
01:31:16 ◼ ► started scrolling vertically, your finger went off to the left, or your finger drifted right a little bit,
01:31:22 ◼ ► the content wouldn't go off to the left or drift right. It would be like it was stuck on a rail,
01:31:26 ◼ ► like, ah, you're vertically scrolling. I'm not going to make you carefully, perfectly move your
01:31:32 ◼ ► finger in a straight line down the screen. I'm going to let you once I realize you're vertically
01:31:35 ◼ ► scrolling, I'm going to lock it in there. And just makes it much we take it for granted. But this is
01:31:40 ◼ ► a thing about the iPhone. If you've ever noticed this before, go load Darren Friable and try it out.
01:31:44 ◼ ► As soon as it figures out you're going up and down, it locks you into that. And so even if you move
01:31:47 ◼ ► your thumb side to side, it won't do that. Slide over 26.1 beta miraculously undoes this.
01:31:59 ◼ ► why is the thing moving up and down? It exactly tracks my finger. I'm trying to, like, alt slide
01:32:05 ◼ ► over. And when you chucked it, it would be like, oh, I see you're trying to dismiss that. And it would
01:32:09 ◼ ► move it exactly to the right, exactly east, right? Or exactly west. And the current one tracks your
01:32:15 ◼ ► finger. So it looks like it's like, it's all loosey goosey. And it's like, it's going up and down.
01:32:19 ◼ ► It's like, that's stupid. Like, why would that? How could they screw that up? And then on top of
01:32:24 ◼ ► that, in my context where I'm watching full screen video and sliding a thing over and back, first of
01:32:29 ◼ ► all, when I swipe it in from the edge of the screen, it doesn't slide in from the edge. It like fades
01:32:34 ◼ ► into its final position. Like, what the hell? It's called slide over. Slide it over, people.
01:32:39 ◼ ► Like, just slide it from the side. It like cross fades into its final position. And then it makes
01:32:46 ◼ ► the full screen, like it has a full screen flash of both windows, like a flicker, like a one frame
01:32:53 ◼ ► flicker flash when the thing comes in. I brought my iPad to just try this out because like, it's so,
01:32:58 ◼ ► it's so maddening to me that like, that they managed to screw this. Like, I should slow-mo it because I
01:33:04 ◼ ► think it like, it half animates, but then fades into the final position. And if you're playing
01:33:09 ◼ ► video, it makes the whole screen flicker every time it comes in and out. Now, granted, this is a beta.
01:33:13 ◼ ► Maybe they'll fix this stuff. I'm like, how do you screw up slide over so bad? It's a feature you
01:33:17 ◼ ► already had that you could have taken exactly as is and put it into the OS. And somehow they found a way
01:33:25 ◼ ► to make it less useful and screw it up in every possible detail. Oh, and then the final thing is,
01:33:31 ◼ ► and this is not the fault of iPadOS 26, I guess. But lots of the apps I use don't understand iOS 26
01:33:40 ◼ ► windowing system. So for example, in ivory, if you swipe left and right and like the toolbar on the top
01:33:47 ◼ ► of the thing, you can change accounts. But when you're an iPadOS, the windowing system grabs that swipe
01:33:54 ◼ ► and thinks you're chucking the window to the left. That's not what you're trying to do. In tapestry,
01:34:00 ◼ ► when you tap a link in the thing and it brings up like an in in in app browser sheet type thing.
01:34:07 ◼ ► And you dismiss that sheet by hitting the big X in the upper or whatever to dismiss like the web view
01:34:12 ◼ ► sheet thing. It dismisses the web view, but it also registers it as a tap on top of the timeline and
01:34:17 ◼ ► scrolls you immediately to the top. Because of the confusion about who is controlling what safe area
01:34:22 ◼ ► inset or whatever, these are a combination of like apps not being updated for iOS 26 and beta bugs and
01:34:27 ◼ ► stuff like that. But the overall experience is that the thing I was trying to avoid, I did to
01:34:32 ◼ ► myself, I feel like Casey, I was trying to avoid messing with trying to avoid messing with my
01:34:37 ◼ ► workflow of like watching full screen video and having apps and slide over. And I messed with it in every
01:34:41 ◼ ► possible way. Because now I'm constantly accidentally scrolling tapestry all the way to the top and have
01:34:45 ◼ ► to use to use the jump back button. I'm sliding things in and out and having a screen flicker every
01:34:51 ◼ ► time it happens. I'm being distracted by the fact that the thing is wobbling up and down as I move it in and
01:34:55 ◼ ► out. I'm being annoyed every time the fade animation comes in and I'm being annoyed about that big
01:34:59 ◼ ► outline. I don't know how they managed this. It was an existing feature, but they re-implanted it
01:35:04 ◼ ► poorly with fewer features. So it's better than not having it. Like I'm sorry, it's better than not
01:35:09 ◼ ► having it, but I kind of regret upgrading. Wow. So other than that, did you like the play?
01:35:14 ◼ ► I mean, if you think how I use my iPad, what else am I getting out of iPad OS 26? Like I'm not a power
01:35:20 ◼ ► user of iPad. It's I'm using, I got this thing for the freaking OLED screen so I could watch TV on it
01:35:24 ◼ ► and also have slack and ivory and tapestry. And it's just, it's kind of sad, but you know, I will
01:35:31 ◼ ► endure. I'm glad. All right. So we have more first impressions to talk about. We're going to have to
01:35:39 ◼ ► shelve that because there's been some news this week. Apple has pulled ice block from the app store.
01:35:44 ◼ ► Richard Lawler at the Verge writes, Apple has removed the ice block app from its app store.
01:35:48 ◼ ► The ice block app is intended to use, to be used anonymously to report sightings of U.S.
01:35:52 ◼ ► Immigration Customs Enforcement or ICE officials and see sightings reported within a five mile radius.
01:35:58 ◼ ► Ice block rose to the top of the app store's charts this summer after being targeted by Trump
01:36:02 ◼ ► administration officials with U.S. Homeland Security Secretary Kristi Noem calling it an obstruction
01:36:07 ◼ ► of justice and Attorney General Pam Bondi claiming it was not a protected speech. On October 2nd,
01:36:13 ◼ ► Bondi took credit for the app's removal saying to Fox News Digital, we reached out to Apple today
01:36:17 ◼ ► demanding they remove the ice block app from their app store. And Apple did so. Ice block is designed
01:36:22 ◼ ► to put ice agents at risk just for doing their jobs. And violence against law enforcement is an
01:36:26 ◼ ► intolerable red line that cannot be crossed. Excuse me while I pick up my eyes, which has just rolled
01:36:31 ◼ ► out of my head. Oh, I'm going to have a lot to say about this. No, we have to be quick. It'll be fine.
01:36:36 ◼ ► Don't worry. Ice block developer Joshua Aaron is quoted in the same report as saying it counts over 1.1
01:36:41 ◼ ► million users. And that Apple has claimed they received information from law enforcement that
01:36:49 ◼ ► Apple made similar claims in 2019 when it removed HK Map, an app that allowed Hong Kong protesters to
01:36:55 ◼ ► trace the movements of law enforcement with CEO Tim Cook telling employees that over the past several
01:37:00 ◼ ► days, we received credible information from the Hong Kong Cybersecurity and Technology Crime Bureau,
01:37:03 ◼ ► as well as from users in Hong Kong, that the app was being used maliciously to target individual
01:37:07 ◼ ► officers for violence and to victimize individuals and property where no police are present. At the time,
01:37:12 ◼ ► lawmakers from both sides of the aisle spoke out against Apple's censorship of apps. A letter signed by
01:37:16 ◼ ► four Republican and three Democratic members of Congress, including Cruz and AOC, if I'm not mistaken,
01:37:26 ◼ ► large U.S. corporate entities will bow to growing Chinese demands rather than lose access to a
01:37:31 ◼ ► billion Chinese customers or consumers. Excuse me. Hmm. You know, it would be great. It would be
01:37:36 ◼ ► really great if we had an alternative way of getting apps on our phones. But let's just get through this
01:37:41 ◼ ► before we do the commentary. But yes, it's true. Reuters says Apple removed more than 1,700 apps from its
01:37:46 ◼ ► app store in 2024 in response to government of demands. But the vast majority, more than 1,300, came from China,
01:37:51 ◼ ► followed by Russia with 171, South Korea with 79. Over the last three years, the United States has not
01:37:56 ◼ ► appeared as one of the countries where apps were removed due to government demands, according to the
01:37:59 ◼ ► company Application Transparency Reports. MJ Tsai writes, back in 2011, a group of Democratic senators
01:38:06 ◼ ► asked Apple to remove DUI checkpoint apps from the app store. Apple's position at the time was that these
01:38:09 ◼ ► apps were a net positive in terms of public safety. Then the government brought the Apple VP of
01:38:14 ◼ ► software technology, Bud Tribble, before the Senate Judiciary Subcommittee, where Senator Schumer
01:38:25 ◼ ► So this last bit of context here. So the Verge story is like, here's the deal, here's what people said
01:38:29 ◼ ► about it with the Iceblock app. I think the Reuters and MJ Tsai story provided some important context,
01:38:33 ◼ ► in particular that 1,700 apps were banned in 2024 due to government responses. Like, government asked
01:38:41 ◼ ► Apple to pull an app, and they said yes, 1,700 times. Again, most of them from China, followed by Russia,
01:38:46 ◼ ► and that the U.S. was not on that list. But then MJ Tsai points out, actually, the U.S. has made Apple pull
01:38:51 ◼ ► down an app, and it was kind of similar, like law enforcement related, to remove DUI checkpoint apps.
01:38:56 ◼ ► You remember where that happened back in 2011? These were apps that would tell you, like, here's a place where
01:39:00 ◼ ► police are checking for drunk drivers, and you could note them. And, you know, again, Democrats and Republicans
01:39:07 ◼ ► asked Apple, you need to pull these apps. Apple hadn't pulled them, even though people had asked them to, and then they
01:39:13 ◼ ► brought them in front of the Congress, and they said, you've got to do this, and eventually
01:39:16 ◼ ► Apple pulled the apps, right? And obviously, the HK map one is very similar, like tracking protests or
01:39:22 ◼ ► whatever, again, law enforcement related. So I feel like the story here is that Apple has always been
01:39:28 ◼ ► pulling apps when governments asked them to, but usually those governments are China and Russia,
01:39:37 ◼ ► government. But now it's happening again with an app that very much looks like a law enforcement
01:39:42 ◼ ► type app, you know, knowing where ICE is or whatever. And before we go wandering off into
01:39:47 ◼ ► ICE, ICE block, and the current context, which is much more dire for us than the DUI checkpoint time
01:39:54 ◼ ► was in 2011, let's say, but actually is very similar. I do want to say that this whole,
01:40:00 ◼ ► this whole thing is a good example of the limits of Apple's strategy, because Apple's strategy with
01:40:08 ◼ ► the Trump administration both times has been essentially appeasement. Try to make nice with
01:40:13 ◼ ► them. Try to make them not mad at you, because when they're mad at you, they are, you know, it's a
01:40:17 ◼ ► corrupt administration, and they will do things to harm your company individually in a vindictive way
01:40:22 ◼ ► because they, because they're just, you know, mobsters and bullies, right? Um, they'll, they'll
01:40:27 ◼ ► specifically hurt your company and we want them specifically not hurt our company. So we're working
01:40:31 ◼ ► within a corrupt system to try to get favors, blah, blah, blah. The problem with that strategy
01:40:36 ◼ ► is the strategy is not to make them mad. And you can blow that whole strategy. Appeasement stops working
01:40:44 ◼ ► and becomes pointless. The second you push back at all and make them mad at you, because then it's
01:40:51 ◼ ► like, well, what did you do all that appeasement for? So it leads to like the sunk cost fallacy of
01:40:56 ◼ ► saying, well, we already made nice with all these things. We already did all this stuff. When they
01:41:00 ◼ ► ask us to pull the ice block out, if we say no, they'll be mad at us. And it's like, well, then what
01:41:05 ◼ ► did we do all that appeasement for? What, what did we sell our souls for before? And so you're inclined to
01:41:09 ◼ ► say yes and say yes to the next thing and say yes to the next thing. And it's a slippery slope of
01:41:16 ◼ ► Appeasement looks great right up until you have the rise of Hitler and then doesn't look so good
01:41:22 ◼ ► anymore, does it? Because you're like anyone who was on board with that appeasement thing tends to
01:41:27 ◼ ► look bad in the eye of history of saying you were appeasing this monster. And you're like, well,
01:41:31 ◼ ► when I was appeasing them, they weren't really that monstrous. They were just on their way to
01:41:34 ◼ ► monsters. And I kept appeasing them. And, but eventually I found my limit and Apple apparently has not
01:41:38 ◼ ► found its limit. And, um, and it's not just the, you know, the fact that we have a terrible corrupt
01:41:42 ◼ ► administration now, again, in 2011 situation was different. It was still, Apple was still making
01:41:47 ◼ ► the same calculus. Oh, the government wants us to do this thing. We don't really care one way or the
01:41:52 ◼ ► other. We'll probably get bad press from this if we say it's helping people to drunk drive. So we'll do
01:41:57 ◼ ► this, but we'll still leave the speed, uh, you know, the speed radar checkpoint things in the Apple
01:42:02 ◼ ► maps app. Like they didn't get rid of that, but DUI is over the line. Like they're always doing this
01:42:06 ◼ ► very cynical corporate calculus of if there's too much public or government pressure to get rid of
01:42:11 ◼ ► an app in the app store, we'll do it. In the end, we controlled it and it's our decision, but we will
01:42:15 ◼ ► do it. And devoid of any context, I feel like the ice block app feels exactly like that. It's like,
01:42:22 ◼ ► Oh, some government thing doesn't want us to have a thing. And Oh, this is harming law enforcement.
01:42:27 ◼ ► Or so they say, or they lie about everything, but half the country believes them anyway. So whatever,
01:42:33 ◼ ► which I'm sure Marco will get to in a second, which is, uh, 2025 is not 2011. Uh, the current
01:42:39 ◼ ► administration is not what it used to be. And appeasement in this scenario, even though it has
01:42:44 ◼ ► been Apple strategy from day one, uh, it has its limits and Apple so far has not found that limit
01:42:50 ◼ ► for them. But I think a lot of their observers have said, you need to like, you need to just get over
01:42:56 ◼ ► the sunk cost fallacy and give up on the appeasement strategy and throw away all the stuff that you've
01:43:02 ◼ ► done and screw your whole company over. Because if you keep down this path of just always saying
01:43:07 ◼ ► yes and always agreeing, that's not going to lead anywhere good. Like we all hope that they're going
01:43:12 ◼ ► to find a line somewhere. But every time something like this happens, people like Marco flip out
01:43:16 ◼ ► justifiably and say, I guess there is no line. I guess there's literally nothing that they can ask
01:43:20 ◼ ► for that. They won't do. It's not that again, not removing ice block is not the biggest thing in the
01:43:24 ◼ ► world, but it's like, you just start extrapolating. Well, what if they ask for this? What if they ask for
01:43:27 ◼ ► that? Because again, the appeasement strategy requires you to not make them mad and saying
01:43:32 ◼ ► no to them will make them mad, which means you will say yes to anything. Marco, please go.
01:43:47 ◼ ► So this entire premise is predicated on a lie. It's predicated on the idea that they had to remove
01:43:56 ◼ ► this app because it was dangerous to law enforcement. That is a straight up lie. If you think about,
01:44:03 ◼ ► okay, what unreasonable danger is posed to ISIS? They use the term officials. I would use the term
01:44:11 ◼ ► kidnappers and murderers. What unreasonable danger is posed to ISIS kidnappers and murderers by people
01:44:18 ◼ ► telling other people where they are. They're the ones that have the guns, zero accountability,
01:44:25 ◼ ► and the complete support of a fascist federal government behind them. They are kidnapping and
01:44:31 ◼ ► murdering US citizens. And we are supposed to believe that they are the ones that need protection
01:44:36 ◼ ► from people knowing where they are. ICE agents, just like Donald Trump himself, are pathetic,
01:44:45 ◼ ► weak, thin-skinned racists who only know how to demonstrate strength with cruelty, violence,
01:44:52 ◼ ► and punching down. They are cowards and they hide their cowardly faces behind masks because the only
01:44:58 ◼ ► real danger they face is cameras. And they're such cowards they can't even handle that.
01:45:06 ◼ ► Now, just like when racists twisted Black Lives Matter into Blue Lives Matter and All Lives Matter,
01:45:13 ◼ ► the idea that the ICE agents are the victims in need of protection from the people they're
01:45:18 ◼ ► assaulting and killing is a dangerous lie. And that lie will be used to justify using more deadly
01:45:25 ◼ ► force in retaliation. And Apple is now complicit in that lie. And the context of this is very
01:45:34 ◼ ► important. The Trump administration is literally waging war on America on Americans. This is not
01:45:41 ◼ ► a metaphor. They are waging war against US law, the US Constitution, and US citizens in the US.
01:45:47 ◼ ► They're deploying military troops intentionally into liberal cities that will probably result in them
01:45:55 ◼ ► shooting liberals. And now, this might sound like an exaggeration, but if this does, ask, say, your parents,
01:46:02 ◼ ► if you're maybe under age, you know, 50 or so, or ask Neil Young, what happens when a thin-skinned
01:46:09 ◼ ► Republican president does deplorable things, and then when people start protesting, they deploy National
01:46:15 ◼ ► Guard soldiers against them? This is going to escalate. People have already died. A lot more people will
01:46:24 ◼ ► probably die as this escalates. And Apple, in this war against Americans on American soil,
01:46:31 ◼ ► has chosen not only to not fight against it, but to explicitly and repeatedly support the aggressors
01:46:39 ◼ ► of this war. Tim Cook's legacy will forever be tarnished by his Trump support. And not only is he
01:46:47 ◼ ► destroying Apple's brand and reputation by doing this, he's supporting the destruction of our democracy
01:46:55 ◼ ► and our home country. Tim Cook has shown us exactly who and what he is. He is cowardly, spineless,
01:47:02 ◼ ► and I would say at this point, irredeemable. But there are other people, powerful people at Apple
01:47:09 ◼ ► who can still make a difference. So Tim Cook is a lost cause. He has shown us who he is. Believe him.
01:47:17 ◼ ► I urge the rest of Apple's senior leadership to do some serious soul-searching right now and consider
01:47:25 ◼ ► what they're willing to support, what they want their careers and legacies to mean, and what they
01:47:33 ◼ ► would like to tell their grandchildren in the future about how they handled what's going on in America
01:47:37 ◼ ► right now with the power they had. Please, Apple leadership, really do some soul-searching and
01:47:42 ◼ ► consider how you want this to end. It's pretty concise. I disagree with a lot of your more extreme
01:47:49 ◼ ► statements there, but the gist is that I think we're all more or less on board with. The lie that
01:47:55 ◼ ► they're perpetrating does have a foundation in plausibility, which is like, in theory, knowing
01:48:01 ◼ ► where law enforcement are located could cause them to come to harm because now people who are trying to
01:48:06 ◼ ► harm them know where they are and can ambush them and so on and so forth. In practice, has that happened?
01:48:09 ◼ ► No, not to my knowledge. So it's just a theoretical thing that could happen. It's the same thing with
01:48:13 ◼ ► the Hong Kong protesters, like trying to avoid the armed forces or whatever. It's like, yeah,
01:48:18 ◼ ► you're picking a side. You're picking the side of law enforcement saying, we don't want people to
01:48:22 ◼ ► know where we are through eight of this app, despite the fact that in our country anyway, it's perfectly
01:48:26 ◼ ► legal to take pictures of police in public and so on and so forth. Still, the story that our government
01:48:32 ◼ ► says to Apple is like, you know, Apple even says they told us that law enforcement officers are
01:48:37 ◼ ► coming to harm because of this. Could it have happened? Maybe. But our government lies so much
01:48:41 ◼ ► about everything routinely all the time. Like, look at all the court cases. They just straight up lie.
01:48:45 ◼ ► ICE in particular lies like crazy. Again, as proven in court multiple times, it's hard to take anything
01:48:51 ◼ ► they say as truth. But in theory, it could happen. So like the issue is actually somewhat nuanced,
01:48:57 ◼ ► kind of like the DUI checkpoint things. Like, do you want people evading DUI checkpoints when they're
01:49:01 ◼ ► drunk? Probably not. Um, as Casey pointed out earlier, this whole thing is a problem caused by
01:49:07 ◼ ► Apple being the only way you can get apps because if Apple wasn't the only way, fine, let them ban
01:49:11 ◼ ► whatever they want. We'll just get it from an alternative app store. But that's not the world
01:49:16 ◼ ► we live in, at least in this country. Um, so yeah, it's problems on top of problems on top of problems.
01:49:21 ◼ ► And like the, the, the appeasement strategy, like it's just, it's a, it's essentially a trap. Like it's,
01:49:27 ◼ ► it works fine right up until it doesn't, but when it doesn't, it negates everything you've done.
01:49:32 ◼ ► It's like, well, what was the point in all of that? What was the point in all the harm that we caused?
01:49:37 ◼ ► If it turns out that the strategy is not sustainable. And I really feel like the strategy is not
01:49:42 ◼ ► sustainable at this point. Like it's just, it's not the fact that they pulled an app. It's, that's not
01:49:47 ◼ ► the thing. It's what everything that Marco said that what's happening with ice in this country is
01:49:50 ◼ ► just very, very bad. It's very bad. It's not like the DUI checkpoints, nothing like this was happening
01:49:59 ◼ ► in that context. So it's like, Oh, Apple pulls an app. It's kind of crappy, but whatever. And now it's
01:50:03 ◼ ► like, okay, well, Apple's Apple pulling the app is part of what part of a thing that is happening
01:50:07 ◼ ► that is terrible and is just getting worse by the day. I I'm a little bit more optimistic than you are
01:50:13 ◼ ► Marco that I'm hoping that the people wearing, uh, uh, dinosaur suits in Portland will actually not,
01:50:18 ◼ ► uh, get themselves shot and killed by ice, but you never know what's going to happen. So
01:50:23 ◼ ► I'm, you know, I'm, I'm hoping that, uh, ridicule and peaceful protest and, uh, you know, we'll,
01:50:28 ◼ ► we'll keep this from escalating because I'm hoping that our side is not going to escalate this
01:50:34 ◼ ► because honestly, like the premise of all this, of sending, you know, sending the national guard
01:50:37 ◼ ► into cities, like the cities are war zones. Everyone's dying, which is not, which is obviously
01:50:41 ◼ ► not true, but part of the whole fascist thing is you just make up lies, get enough people to believe
01:50:44 ◼ ► it. And then you send in troops and then the troops, you know, cause violence to happen. And
01:50:49 ◼ ► they say, see, look, we told you there was violence and it's just, it's a terrible thing,
01:50:52 ◼ ► but hopefully people know that that's what's happening and can do things like dressing up
01:50:57 ◼ ► in silly outfits to, uh, combat it. Uh, but anyway, it's, yeah, it's grim and Apple is not helping.
01:51:09 ◼ ► Yeah. We'll see. Like it's, you really can't tell how these things are going to go, but like
01:51:13 ◼ ► for people who are in positions to, to influence it, like, you know, obviously individual citizens
01:51:19 ◼ ► protesting and voting and so on and so forth, but like in positions of power, like Apple or any of
01:51:23 ◼ ► the other companies that are, or universities or any of any other of the large institutions in our
01:51:28 ◼ ► country that are being, that the government has essentially captured with this, with this, uh,
01:51:33 ◼ ► appeasement is the path of least resistance strategy. They can actually make an even bigger
01:51:37 ◼ ► difference. And it's, uh, it's sometimes heartening to see like a couple of universities
01:51:41 ◼ ► actually standing up for themselves, but it's incredibly disheartening to see Apple and all
01:51:45 ◼ ► the tech companies and Columbia university and all the other things that just have folded like a house
01:51:49 ◼ ► of cards and they're not pushing back. And like I said, it's because the second they push back,
01:51:53 ◼ ► they, it, they are self negating their entire, you know, nine month long appeasement strategy.
01:52:00 ◼ ► And that's going to feel bad for them. It's a sunk cost fallacy, but they, they probably need to just
01:52:04 ◼ ► get over it. Yeah. And also I think at this point, it is very clear that, uh, Apple needs to, at this
01:52:10 ◼ ► point, recognize what they are and stop quoting Martin Luther King on their homepage. Yeah. And also I would
01:52:18 ◼ ► say other, other people who would have pretty strong opinions about what they're doing right
01:52:22 ◼ ► now, stop quoting them too, including Steve jobs. They should never quote Steve jobs again on their
01:52:29 ◼ ► homepage. If they're going to act like this, because a lot of people say, what would Steve do? And a lot
01:52:33 ◼ ► of times wish wishful thinking Steve would not do this. He, he was a hippie. He was there. He would do a
01:52:48 ◼ ► I don't know. People get old. He did do that thing with like, uh, uh, colluding to, uh, not let people
01:52:53 ◼ ► change jobs for more money with like Pixar and everything. That's pretty close to this again.
01:52:58 ◼ ► Not great. Like he's, he did a lot of not great things and had a lot of not great opinions. And he
01:53:03 ◼ ► was a master BS artist to try to rationalize what he was doing, but he would not do this.
01:53:08 ◼ ► Well, anyway, what we really got to be hoping for is what the next CEO will do. And Steve's not going to
01:53:13 ◼ ► be the next CEO and neither is Tim. So fingers crossed that, that transition cannot happen soon
01:53:20 ◼ ► enough. Hi. Did you see the recent story there talking about all the, like that Jeff Williams
01:53:24 ◼ ► leaving and stuff like that. A German had a bunch on it. And it was mentioning like, if Tim leaves,
01:53:28 ◼ ► he might still be chairman of the board. I'm like, no, Tim, just go to an Island. Do not stay on as
01:53:33 ◼ ► chairman of the board, please. I mean, at least it would be, at least it would be step one. Like step
01:53:36 ◼ ► one is get out of the CEO role. I know, but like, I know obviously he's going to be around
01:53:40 ◼ ► for a while. Not to turn this to a succession topic, but like part of the, one of the things
01:53:45 ◼ ► that Tim had a problem, quote unquote problem that Tim had is just the long shadow of Steve
01:53:49 ◼ ► Jobs. So for like his first few years, it was like he was steering the Steve Jobs ship and
01:53:53 ◼ ► that didn't let him become his own CEO, which for better or for worse. And we would say for
01:53:58 ◼ ► worse at this point. Right. Yeah. But like, I'm so afraid that like the next CEO will feel
01:54:03 ◼ ► like they have to like be steering the Tim Cook ship for the first two years. Like, no,
01:54:06 ◼ ► like that's why I want him to get it out on him. I don't want him to be on the board. I don't want
01:54:10 ◼ ► him to be there looking over anyone's shoulder. I want the new CEO to say, I'm the new CEO. I have
01:54:14 ◼ ► different ideas, clean break from the past, but I'm not sure that that's going to happen.
01:54:18 ◼ ► I mean, we'll see like, you know, the, you know, the, the, uh, recent reigniting of the rumors
01:54:23 ◼ ► that John Ternus might be the one kind of, you know, slated up in line next. You know, we,
01:54:32 ◼ ► like what kind of CEO he would be, but so far, like, honestly, if you look at, you know,
01:54:37 ◼ ► look at what, what at Apple is working really well and what could use some help hardware is
01:54:47 ◼ ► hardware. So it's hard to tell where he stands on that stuff, you know, like that, like we
01:54:51 ◼ ► don't really, we, we won't know that unless we actually, you know, have that situation and
01:54:55 ◼ ► see how it goes. And that's the worst, that's the worst thing about like the, like the second
01:54:58 ◼ ► and third level of the org chart on Apple. You almost have no idea what the hell they're
01:55:05 ◼ ► know what I mean? Yeah. And it's like, it's kind of like when you're electing politicians,
01:55:08 ◼ ► you just hope that like this politician did what it took to get elected. But once they get
01:55:12 ◼ ► in there, they're going to do all this great stuff. Almost never happens. Like, because
01:55:16 ◼ ► to get that far, to become the senior vice president at Apple, you have to be so willing
01:55:22 ◼ ► to, you know, be on message and be aligned with the leadership that are you ever going to get
01:55:29 ◼ ► somebody who spends all those years working all the way up, but in their secret heart is
01:55:32 ◼ ► like, what's what I get in charge? I'm going to change everything. No, I'd feel like you
01:55:35 ◼ ► don't like the breed, you breed like the only way you get that close. The only way you get
01:55:39 ◼ ► to be second in line or whatever is to be like, to essentially just drink the Kool-Aid and be
01:55:43 ◼ ► like, yep, no, I agree with all these Apple things. And just that's, and like Ternus is just a
01:55:50 ◼ ► cipher in this because, you know, again, in hardware, you don't spend a lot of time having to
01:55:53 ◼ ► make any kind of decisions that touch this at all. Cause it's like, it's microchips. And like,
01:56:01 ◼ ► even, even that is more of like a Jack Williams type thing. And anyway, uh, it's, I'm, I'm ready
01:56:14 ◼ ► I'm ready to be in the uncertain future. Like I'm ready to be like in, in like, Oh, there's
01:56:18 ◼ ► someone new and I don't know what they're going to do. Cause I know what the current people are
01:56:22 ◼ ► going to do and it's not good. Yeah. I mean like, yeah, we need, we need a lot of turnover
01:56:29 ◼ ► Yeah. And that's what the German story is about that we're referring to that like all those,
01:56:32 ◼ ► all the, you know, Jeff Williams, I think we mentioned this in the show ages ago when it
01:56:35 ◼ ► happened, like bringing a second command up and he's on his way out the door. And a lot,
01:56:39 ◼ ► lots of people are kind of of that age in senior leadership where they're going to retire
01:56:43 ◼ ► within the next few years, including Tim Cook, we all hope. Um, and so there could actually
01:56:49 ◼ ► dangerous situation. Things could go terribly wrong, but it's also your only possible hope
01:56:54 ◼ ► for, you know, positive change. Yeah. It just sucks. It all sucks. Everything sucks from top
01:56:59 ◼ ► to bottom. And I feel like it is, I'm casting about trying to find something to be excited about
01:57:09 ◼ ► something to feel like, yes, yes, this group or this person or these people, they get it and
01:57:16 ◼ ► they're fighting for the same thing that I am to whatever degree I'm fighting, fighting
01:57:30 ◼ ► That's why you can, if you like follow all the court cases, you can enjoy all the lower court
01:57:33 ◼ ► decisions before the Supreme court overrules them all and says Trump can do whatever he
01:57:36 ◼ ► wants. So if you can just enjoy the in-between period after they win decisively in the lower
01:57:41 ◼ ► courts and you get to read those court decisions where they just take the government to task
01:57:52 ◼ ► Well, let me tell you, I'm sure the Democrats are fighting tooth and now, nevermind. No, they're
01:57:59 ◼ ► Like I, at this point, it's like, I love that everybody has the quaint idea that the courts
01:58:03 ◼ ► are going to save us. Look, look at how much they have saved us so far. That's not going
01:58:14 ◼ ► Well, the court, the Supreme court won't save us. The lower courts, the government's losing
01:58:28 ◼ ► You know, look, we've, the entire first Trump era was defined by, you know, like, you know,
01:58:38 ◼ ► are going to get him. That's it. You want to get him this time. You've got to be rooting
01:58:48 ◼ ► can, we can all pray for that, but nothing else will get him and nothing else will stop
01:58:54 ◼ ► him. And, you know, if you think this is all going to be over in three years, I got news
01:58:58 ◼ ► for you about that too. Like I wouldn't necessarily count on that either. Until, until time saves
01:59:04 ◼ ► us all, uh, that's, you know, don't count on anything coming to save us. Anyway, what a
01:59:15 ◼ ► No, you, you can't end on that. It's terrible. We'll have the after show to pick us back up.
01:59:20 ◼ ► Thank you to our sponsors this week, Squarespace, delete me and open case. And thanks to our members
01:59:25 ◼ ► who support us directly. You can join us at atp.fm slash join. One of the perks of membership
01:59:29 ◼ ► is ATP overtime, our weekly bonus topic. This week on overtime, we're going to be talking about
01:59:34 ◼ ► the new meta Ray-Ban display glasses and Apple's changing plans in response to that. You can join
01:59:42 ◼ ► to listen atp.fm slash join. Thank you very much, everybody. And we'll talk to you next week.
01:59:50 ◼ ► Now the show is over. They didn't even mean to begin. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
01:59:59 ◼ ► John didn't do any research. Marco and Casey wouldn't let him. Cause it was accidental. Oh, it was accidental.
02:00:10 ◼ ► And you can find the show notes at atp.fm. And if you're into Mastodon, you can follow them
02:00:21 ◼ ► at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S. So that's Casey Liss. M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-G. Marco Arman. S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A. It's accidental.
02:00:49 ◼ ► So this after show is going to be potentially fun for Marco and I, and real sad for one of us.
02:00:57 ◼ ► Oh no. There's only one left. Uh, John news broke over the last, I don't know, 24, 48 hours as we
02:01:03 ◼ ► record this, that TiVo is exiting its legacy DVR business. Oh, you're going to have to wake up and
02:01:10 ◼ ► join the 2020s. What are you going to do? No, this is not really sad for me because it's like, uh, TiVo,
02:01:16 ◼ ► I'm proud of TiVo for living as long as it has. Yeah. Cause it's, it's been a while. Like TiVo kind of
02:01:23 ◼ ► like, uh, a couple other companies that, uh, I've previously enjoyed, like they lost the ability
02:01:28 ◼ ► to make good products several years ago. Uh, it's the reason I'm still running older TiVos because
02:01:35 ◼ ► they're, they're literally better spec wise than the stuff they were selling. Like they stopped selling,
02:01:40 ◼ ► uh, DVRs that had the hard drive capacity of the one that I bought ages ago. They just like made
02:01:46 ◼ ► them smaller and worse and put smaller diameter, noisier fans in them and crappier hard drives and
02:01:51 ◼ ► just their products got worse. Right. Even as technology marched on and they never really made
02:01:55 ◼ ► the treasures into the 4k era, mostly because cable card didn't make a transition to the 4k era.
02:01:59 ◼ ► Like they're, that's not true. Time has passed them by, but we have 4k cable cards. That's the
02:02:05 ◼ ► thing. Yeah. I'm almost sure of it because I get 4k from my cable card powered HD home run. I'm,
02:02:10 ◼ ► I might be wrong, but I'm almost certain. No, I think we went through this when we did like the HD
02:02:15 ◼ ► home run thing. Like it's not the, it's not the cable card. It's the problem. Remember I was saying
02:02:18 ◼ ► like the only channels I get in 4k are like when they have those Red Sox games locally every once in a
02:02:22 ◼ ► while, but everything else is 1080. Oh, that is 100% true. Yeah. That's basically what I mean.
02:02:26 ◼ ► They're like, their idea was they would take quote unquote cable television and record it to a hard
02:02:30 ◼ ► drive. And if the cable television is 1080, uh, but you can get 4k on Netflix, you know, but anyway,
02:02:35 ◼ ► the streaming area obviously came and passed them by like, you know, and I, even though I still have
02:02:39 ◼ ► TiVos connected to both of my televisions, I have a good one on my downstairs TV and a not so good one
02:02:46 ◼ ► on my upstairs TV. Uh, you know, my, our viewing is just basically transitioned away from them almost
02:02:51 ◼ ► entirely, almost, but not quite entirely to streaming services. So I got, I mentioned this on
02:02:56 ◼ ► ages ago that I got rid of HBO and my cable plan and just subscribed to it in the streaming app
02:03:00 ◼ ► because the streaming app had higher resolution, right? Uh, you know, streaming is, has come and
02:03:05 ◼ ► displaced TiVo. Um, and so it is kind of amazing that they've lasted as long as they can. It is also
02:03:10 ◼ ► a shame that as this transition happened, they lost the ability to make good products. They could have
02:03:15 ◼ ► done more of like a transition into like a more niche consumer product type thing. But like, again,
02:03:20 ◼ ► they're, they're constrained by the fact that the television coming to the house, either over the
02:03:24 ◼ ► air or through cable, uh, lost the spec race to the television coming into your house through streaming
02:03:29 ◼ ► services. We have streaming services just went to 4k faster and higher bit rates and HDR and, uh,
02:03:34 ◼ ► cable was still jamming lots of channels over a single wire and blah, blah, blah. So, you know,
02:03:39 ◼ ► time marches on. Uh, I still have my TiVos. I'm still running them. I still will continue to run them.
02:03:43 ◼ ► I still pay for quote unquote cable television and I get stuff on there. Um, but these days,
02:03:48 ◼ ► for example, and I'm watching the Superbowl or something when that's on rather than just going
02:03:52 ◼ ► directly to TiVo and watching the Superbowl, I'll check if it is in higher resolution on a
02:03:57 ◼ ► streaming service somewhere just to try to get a better version of the Superbowl. The answer is
02:04:01 ◼ ► usually it's not. It's usually basically the same because sports is still kind of behind the times
02:04:04 ◼ ► for a variety of reasons. But anyway, so yeah, TiVo is, uh, no longer making a thing with hard drives
02:04:10 ◼ ► and computers that will record cable television to the hard drive and let you play it back later.
02:04:13 ◼ ► But I do want to say pouring one out for TiVo and even though I don't drink, um, is that the
02:04:19 ◼ ► original TiVo back before high definition television was just, you know, standard definition cable
02:04:25 ◼ ► television, analog cable television coming over a cable, going into a cable card that was stuck into
02:04:31 ◼ ► one of these things that had a computer and a hard drive in it was one of the best consumer
02:04:35 ◼ ► electronic products ever made. Both in terms of how good it was at doing its job, but also in terms of
02:04:42 ◼ ► how it changed the lives of people who had it. It's not iPhone caliber. Obviously it didn't take
02:04:47 ◼ ► the world by storm because it was kind of geeky, but like the way, I mean, if you talk to anybody
02:04:51 ◼ ► who was around back then and got one of the early TiVos, the way it changed your relationship with
02:04:55 ◼ ► television is actually analogous to the way streaming services have changed the way that everybody deals
02:04:59 ◼ ► with television. Uh, because it lets you, you know, let you pause live TV, let you record multiple
02:05:04 ◼ ► shows without using VC, you know, VHS tapes, let you fast forward and rewind and skip commercials,
02:05:09 ◼ ► which is the big thing that changed everyone's lives. Right. And eventually it's recording
02:05:12 ◼ ► six shows at once, which is the thing you only the people with like 17 stacked VCRs used to do.
02:05:16 ◼ ► And then you had to rewind all the tapes and blah, blah, blah. But the real thing, this thing was so
02:05:20 ◼ ► great at was, you know, that little peanut shape remote. And the fact that that thing was so responsive
02:05:24 ◼ ► back in the analog cable days, I don't even know what resolution it was. It was like 480 I,
02:05:29 ◼ ► 480 P with like MPEG one code or whatever garbage, like low resolution, primitive algorithms we had.
02:05:40 ◼ ► played, immediately played. You could fast forward and rewind in increments of X number of seconds as
02:05:44 ◼ ► fast as you could hit that button. Just incredibly responsive, incredibly easy to navigate. Apple TV
02:05:50 ◼ ► cannot touch the TiVo up, down, left, right, select button. Like every menu was like the old iPhone.
02:05:56 ◼ ► You go right to go into something, you go left to go out, up and down to scroll up and down. The whole
02:06:00 ◼ ► interface was that. So fast, so simple, so readable from the couch. Everything was instant. Play the show.
02:06:08 ◼ ► It's playing. Pause the show. It's paused. Skip commercial. It's like, and as time went on and as
02:06:13 ◼ ► HD came out and so on and so forth, the TiVos got worse. They became less responsive. The interface
02:06:17 ◼ ► went through a terrible transition where it got way, way worse. And some of the interface was in
02:06:22 ◼ ► non-HD and some of it was at HD or whatever. And they, you know, they, they declined. They diminished.
02:06:27 ◼ ► They got worse at what they were doing. Streaming came and wiped them off the face of the earth. But
02:06:31 ◼ ► today with TiVo stopping the production, you can't even buy these anymore, although you shouldn't buy
02:06:36 ◼ ► them because they're worse than the old ones. But stopping production of their hard drive based
02:06:39 ◼ ► DVRs, it's worth remembering just how good the TiVo was in its heyday and how it totally transformed my
02:06:48 ◼ ► relationship with television. It stopped being a thing that I had to sit down at a certain time and
02:06:52 ◼ ► watch or whatever. I stopped seeing commercials entirely, which kind of disconnected, disconnected me
02:06:57 ◼ ► from popular culture for a while because people would talk about commercials that were on TV and
02:07:00 ◼ ► I'd never seen them. That's still kind of true this day because I think a lot of people add support
02:07:04 ◼ ► to streaming services and I don't. But what a piece of hardware. That remote, still amazing. By the way,
02:07:10 ◼ ► if you have old TiVo remotes, you can teach the Apple TV to use them as long as you have IR line of
02:07:14 ◼ ► sight to the thing. I don't necessarily recommend that because in some situations, the Swavy pad is faster
02:07:19 ◼ ► than the five-way button. But in every other respect, using a TiVo remote with your Apple TV is a much
02:07:24 ◼ ► more pleasant experience. If only the Apple TV with eight bajillion times the computing power was as
02:07:29 ◼ ► responsive as like a Series 2 TiVo was back in the day. I'm sorry for young people who didn't
02:07:33 ◼ ► experience this, but believe me, like the same way you don't believe that changing channels used to be as
02:07:38 ◼ ► fast as it was back when we were little kids because you've only ever seen a modern TV where
02:07:42 ◼ ► changing channels takes for freaking ever, whereas the channels used to change as fast as you could turn that
02:07:46 ◼ ► dial. Like, yeah, analog. It had its downsides, but it also had its upsides. Anyway, with TiVo going
02:07:53 ◼ ► away, I just want to remember TiVo for the great, I will always have great memories of it. It made my
02:07:58 ◼ ► life better. It continues to make my life better, even as the company not goes out of business, but
02:08:03 ◼ ► stops making those products. It still has a place in my entertainment center until the thing finally
02:08:09 ◼ ► dies. And then I guess maybe someday I'll eventually be a quote unquote cord cutter because one thing I'm
02:08:15 ◼ ► not doing is ever having a cable company box in my house. And that's the thing that I never did
02:08:19 ◼ ► because TiVo, this is another thing TiVo did, TiVo saved me from ever having a cable box. Every time I
02:08:24 ◼ ► went over to someone's house and they had cable and had to use the cable company cable box, man, it was
02:08:29 ◼ ► grim. TiVo was just living in the future for at least a decade. And it also happened to coincide the
02:08:35 ◼ ► time when both my kids were born, or at least my first kid and a little shading to the second.
02:08:38 ◼ ► I do not know what I would have done without TiVo giving me all that stuff to watch at 3am as I
02:08:47 ◼ ► You know, I, again, in the same way that I give Marco a lot of stick about fish, even though I bet
02:08:52 ◼ ► you I would enjoy it a lot more than I admit, I give John a lot of stick about TiVo, particularly
02:08:57 ◼ ► running it in the year of our Lord 2025. But with that said, what John described, I cannot
02:09:09 ◼ ► commercials are. And that's not because of TiVo. That's because of the things that TiVo
02:09:13 ◼ ► brought to us. And, you know, there was no cable company DVR that I was aware of until TiVo
02:09:20 ◼ ► existed. I mean, it really was revolutionary. And if you're born in the year, you know, in the
02:09:26 ◼ ► new millennium, if your birth date is, it begins with a two, I don't think you understand how
02:09:31 ◼ ► incredibly revolutionary a DVR was because, you know, my kids don't understand that there
02:09:41 ◼ ► example, there's a brief window of time over the summer where the family really got into
02:09:44 ◼ ► Jeopardy and then school happened. We've mostly fizzled about that, but they didn't understand
02:09:49 ◼ ► that you couldn't just watch Jeopardy whenever the hell you want. Like, what do you mean it's
02:09:53 ◼ ► not on? Yeah. What do you mean? What does that even mean? What is a channel? I don't even
02:09:57 ◼ ► like, I hear you say those words, but I don't know. What is a channel? What does that mean?
02:10:01 ◼ ► Like a YouTube channel? Right. Exactly. Exactly. And so all of that, to me, Genesis was the TiVo. And
02:10:13 ◼ ► It's not ridiculous, though. Like, if it keeps working, like, the ridiculous thing is paying
02:10:16 ◼ ► for cable. That's the ridiculous thing. But having a TiVo in the house, if you are paying
02:10:25 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, I mean, remember, I did try channels. I do believe my current TiVo is still nicer
02:10:29 ◼ ► than channels, because I tried it. I tried channels. I did it. Channels is really good. If TiVo
02:10:46 ◼ ► I know. I just, but I'm saying, like, I don't, Fios doesn't deliver 4K except for, and remember
02:10:50 ◼ ► we went through this, like, the Red Sox games every once in a while and a few really high
02:10:55 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, on the exact same day that TiVo stopped making DVRs, we also lost another revolution.
02:11:03 ◼ ► AOL dial-up service ended. Literally the same day, September 30th, both of these things died.
02:11:16 ◼ ► Although I would say that AOL dial-up service was revolutionary for a lot of people, but its
02:11:22 ◼ ► Yes, agreed. But also probably 10 years earlier. But yeah, the remarkable thing, in both cases,
02:11:28 ◼ ► in the case of AOL dial-up and of TiVo DVRs, in both cases, most people hearing the news today,
02:11:37 ◼ ► Yeah. Didn't they say, like, how many people were actually using dial-up when they stopped it?
02:11:46 ◼ ► I just wonder if those are, like, accounts where there's no, it's just, like, some auto-pay
02:11:52 ◼ ► thousand actual humans dialing up to AOL. But maybe, you know, like, really old people?
02:11:58 ◼ ► Yeah, I mean, figure, like, maybe if you live somewhere rural where, like, you haven't had
02:12:00 ◼ ► good internet service options for most of the time, you might still not. And you have really
02:12:05 ◼ ► simple needs and you've been doing the same thing for 40 years, like, maybe, yeah, okay.
02:12:10 ◼ ► I would think the capacitors would blow on their PCs. You know what I mean? Like, how is the
02:12:16 ◼ ► Yeah. Well, I guess, like, you know, people still make, like, all-in-one printer scanner fax
02:12:20 ◼ ► things. So, like, the components must still be made for the fax modems in those. So, I guess,
02:12:25 ◼ ► like, you can still make a modem. But, I mean, how would you, like, how would you get the
02:12:32 ◼ ► computer version? Like, who even still makes... Like, I'm sure somebody makes, like, a USB
02:12:36 ◼ ► Yeah. I mean, you know, it can happen. Like, hey, I've got my Synology down in the basement.
02:12:39 ◼ ► I was at 13 years old of continuous running and I've used my Mac Pro for 10 years. So, like,
02:12:45 ◼ ► Yeah. But I bet, though, I bet Casey's right. I bet it's, like, mostly probably, like, subscriptions
02:12:52 ◼ ► That was John that said that. But either way, I was looking for a link to put in the show notes
02:12:56 ◼ ► and I stumbled on a Tom's Hardware link. In the U.S., there are still some ISPs which can
02:13:09 ◼ ► We all know that. We've been through this many times. The biggest name alternative is MSN Dial-Up,
02:13:13 ◼ ► which is $22 a month. There are also dial-up services offered by NetZero and Juno. Remember
02:13:24 ◼ ► That was my first, you know, quote, internet. I mean, that was when it was back when it
02:13:32 ◼ ► That's incredible. Finishing up from Tom's Hardware, we recently also had the pleasure of
02:13:35 ◼ ► seeing a pair of network enthusiasts bond 12 56K modems together to set dial-up broadband