The Tyranny of Radio
Marco:
Yeah, no, everyone's doing it.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So, all right, let's do some follow-up.
Casey:
John, why don't you tell us about LLVM IR?
John:
Last week, it got so long ago, whenever it was, we talked about LLVM IR, which is also known as bitcode in its sort of binary representation, and whether or not that helps Apple to be able to move any of their platforms to different CPU architectures in the future.
John:
We basically decided that it doesn't help or hurt, that it is an orthogonal concern, mostly having to do with
John:
Taking advantage of new instructions and new processors, being able to remove instructions from processors when they're no longer needed, all without asking developers to re-upload new binary versions of their applications and recompile them for new architectures and stuff.
John:
So a bunch of people sent me good links.
John:
Someone sent me, I forgot who this was, unfortunately, a 2011, I think it's a Usenet post, or no, a mailing list post from Dan Gohman at Apple.
John:
presumably he works on the lvm team or did at least in 2011 i'll put the link in the show notes people can read it he outlines the the reasons why he thinks lvm ir is a poor system for building a platform by which he means any system where lvm ir would be a format in which programs are stored or transmitted for subsequent use on multiple underlying architectures which is exactly the question we were asking before again this is 2011 things may have changed but in general he says like if you're going to make if you're going to make some kind of uh
John:
Multi-CPU architecture intermediary form LLVM IR would not be it.
John:
And he lists the reasons.
John:
Someone named Jacob Stoklin Olson, hope I got that right, sent us an email with some more good information about what is platform-specific about bitcode, what is it that makes bitcode not portable.
John:
He says one of the biggest sources of bitcode differences is the target ABI, meaning Application Binary Interface,
John:
clang generates functions that are able to call c functions compiled by other compilers by following the abi for that platform that's basically what an abi is like so that everything doesn't have to be compiled by the same compiler you compile with one compiler or have a compiled library or whatever i can call you you can call back into me like we all know how we're going to call each other's functions it's the abi defines how function arguments and return values are laid out in memory or registers like you know you put your
John:
address here and the return value is going to be in this register that's the abi everyone has to agree on that or you can't call into other code and one of the requirements for bitcode and for any of apple's compiler stuff is that you have to be able to compile code and has to be able to call functions that were compiled with another compiler even if it's just an earlier version of the same compiler otherwise every time a new os came out that was compiled with a new compiler everyone would have to recompile their apps if the abi changed it doesn't and so this is a sort of hard and fast requirement of what apple does with its compilers
John:
jacob goes on in general the clang front end is using a combination of lvm types and argument flags to get the code generator to generate the correct function calling sequence it knows how the code generator for selected target architecture behaves he says you can even get different bit code when using different abis on the same instruction set architecture so even on a single chip you could have multiple abis defined and you get different bit code if you target different abis
John:
He ends here by saying it would be possible to create LLVMIR that can be compiled on multiple CBR architectures only by giving up on the ability to call native functions compiled with other compilers.
John:
You could define a virtual ABI that specifies the struct layouts and how C function calls are mapped to LLVMIR.
John:
This is essentially what Google's PNACL, the Portable Native Client Project, does.
John:
It works since the code only has to run inside Chrome sandbox and calling functions provided by Chrome.
John:
So lots of theoretical possibilities, but in the practical real world of what Apple uses as compilers for, bitcode and LLVM IR are not the answer to portability across platforms.
Casey:
Okay, then.
Casey:
And why don't you tell us about what Chris Lattner has been saying lately?
John:
This is some info from Kai Shin, who says, Chris Latner was asked a question.
John:
These are all paraphrases.
John:
He was asked a question, and I'm assuming this is at WWDC.
John:
He didn't say, any plans to write Swift in Swift?
John:
We talked about self-hosting last week.
John:
Self-hosting turns out to be the right definition.
John:
I just failed to read the Wikipedia page correctly.
John:
Anyway.
John:
And what he said was, what Chris Lattner said was, his goal is to make the best language for writing consumer-facing software, not compilers.
John:
And he mentioned that if you started writing a compiler in Swift, it would end up being a great language for writing low-level code, but inadequate for writing iOS and Mac apps, which is kind of like the politically correct answer.
John:
For self-hosting, I thought it would be neat.
John:
It's kind of a shame that the people who are actually writing Swift or spending their whole day writing C++, wouldn't they love to use this new language they've invented to do their work as well?
John:
uh and i got a lot of replies like this it's like no i asked chris latner that and he says we did that then just you know swift would be a really good language for writing compilers and that's not what they're making they're making trying to make a really good language for writing ios and mac apps which technically according to a submission statement uh in the apple book published on the topic they're trying to make a language that spans the range compilers would be in that range i think it would prove the language would uh can do that type of task but anyway
John:
uh luckily we live in the age of twitter and the new age of the open apple not the one from the apple 2 keyboard nice yeah chris latner replied on twitter to a thread involving us and he said we'll put links to his tweets many of us would love to rewrite the swift compiler at swift it would crash a lot less and be a lot more joyful for us
John:
That said, we have a ton of higher priorities that affect users of Swift.
John:
Poor compiler hackers would just have to suffer for now.
John:
So the cobbler's children have no shoes or whatever that expression is.
John:
So contrary to the many tales of Chris Lattner saying, I'm sure he did say this, that if we wrote our compiler in Swift...
John:
If that's what we were using sort of to dog food our language, we would end up making a language that's really good at writing compilers, which is true if they did it to exclusion of everything else.
John:
But in the grand scheme of things, Chris Latterley says many of us would love to write the compiler in Swift.
John:
Like, of course they would like... They're making this new language.
John:
Of course they like the language.
John:
Of course they like to use it in their work, but it is not really a high priority.
John:
Their main priority, of course, is making it a great language to write iOS and Mac apps because that's the most important part of Swift.
John:
So there you have this.
John:
I think this is a great example of like...
John:
direct accurate quotes from people can be misleading if the only thing you ever hear is that and which is why i think chris felt the need to say even though i said that and it's true it's not the entire story like there are many dimensions to all these decisions it's not like oh chris latner hates swift and would never want to write his compiler in it or the reverse chris ladder would love to write in swift but mean old apple won't let him like everyone is always looking for the sensational headline type story especially if something gets repeated around and around and if everyone in apple like if the people who the source of information were silent
John:
any one of these things could have like spiraled into like three years from now it becomes accepted wisdom that chris ladder never wanted to write the compiler in swift which is just bs and i just love the fact in the age of twitter he can say you know what tweet tweet done i have now sort of like adjusted the record to more accurately represent the complex nuanced position that i have and you can do that in two tweets right combined with all the things he apparently said to people wwdc
Casey:
That is yet another example of a whole new Apple PR world, which is exciting.
Casey:
Final bit of follow up.
Casey:
Why don't you tell us about trim support?
John:
I think it was also last episode where we talked about trim force, the little command that will let you enable trim on your SSDs, even though Apple doesn't want to.
John:
And it has that big scary warning that says that you can enable it.
John:
But if you lose data, don't blame us.
John:
So 1010.4 is out now.
John:
It has this thing in it, I believe.
John:
I upgraded at work.
John:
I didn't upgrade at home yet.
John:
I didn't look for the command, but I'm assuming it's there.
John:
Um, and the last show I said, you know, like, I'm not going to use it until I have problems.
John:
And I had said something like, I know probably people have the same SSD as me and they have trim enabled and everything is fine, but I don't want to be the Guinea pig.
John:
Uh, and I'm not going to take the risk until I have problems.
John:
And a bunch of people sent me links to a couple of stories that describe some of the,
John:
some of the hard hard drives whatever the hell you call them some of the solid state drives that do have problems with the trim command if you enable trim on them they accidentally erase the wrong blocks of data and just destroy your data for you uh and on that list of drives that may or may not have this problem according to various people's stories is my drive oh lovely
John:
And so I'm very glad that I didn't enable trim, and now I'm probably not going to enable trim.
John:
I don't know the technical details of the thing.
John:
Does it depend on firmware version?
John:
Is it just for queued trim requests or for all of them?
John:
Or some people think it doesn't matter, the drive reports that supports queued trim commands, but it really doesn't.
John:
And most of the stories involve Linux, not OS X. So I don't know what to think, but safe bet, don't mess with TrimForce unless you're feeling adventurous and don't mind losing any data or unless you have...
John:
some amount of information that you're sure that like other people are doing this it's safe it's been torture tested uh so yeah i'm kind of leaving my drive the way it is for now and for the record don't you have a very popular and well regarded samsung ssd yeah it's like super expensive it's a terabyte it's their it's their latest greatest best model and you know it works 850 pro yeah it's the 850 pro that's a yeah that's a very common popular well regarded ssd and that's a little scary that's on that list
John:
Well, I mean, it's scary, but the OSs are doing the right thing.
John:
It's blacklisted in Linux.
John:
I'm assuming Windows does the right thing.
John:
OS X does the right thing with it.
John:
The right thing in this case turns out to be, look, Apple didn't test it and verify that it behaves correctly, so no trim for you, right?
John:
And it's bad because we know that eventually the thing's going to fill up and slow down and everything, but it's better than losing data, so I don't know.
John:
This is a thread that you can follow.
John:
I put a link to a comment thread in Ars Technica that has links that you can chase down to like...
John:
a you know samsung bug reporting website where linux users are complaining about it and samsung's like this isn't our problem linux is open source fix it yourself or whatever like it's not that's not what they say but they basically end up saying like it's not a supported platform is what they end up saying and they mentioned open source in that and be like what are you saying because it's open source we have to fix it ourself what it comes down to is samsung doesn't care that it doesn't work on linux but os 10
John:
like that's that's an apple's court apple can validate this or not and apple can file bugs or i guess anyone can file bugs against like they can enable it on os 10 and get a reproduction of a problem and say hey your drive with this form firmware does this thing wrong um i don't know anyway i'm happy with my ssd it's still really fast it's still nice and quiet it's still got a terabyte of storage as far as i'm aware it has not corrupted my data yet so so far so good
Marco:
Please correct me if I'm wrong on this.
Marco:
Wasn't the whole point of the more advanced SSD controller starting with the Sandforce thing forever ago, wasn't the whole point of that to kind of like use different tricks, like different leveling techniques and everything to keep drive performance pretty good even without trim support?
Yeah.
John:
all those things are true that they're trying to make performance better by doing tricks but you need to have trim because when you that episode we talked about trim when the when the operating system deletes a file it doesn't go and overwrite every block with zeros or it doesn't tell the ssd that all those blocks are gone it just updates like a single a single little piece of information in its file system metadata structure that says you know what
John:
This area that was previously taken is now free.
John:
So it updates a bitmap thing in HFS Plus or some other metadata.
John:
And the only thing that gets written to the disk, as far as the disk mechanism is concerned, it sees right to this area of the disk.
John:
And that area of the disk is the metadata area.
John:
It's not actually touching the data of the file.
John:
It just says, oh, I received a right to this metadata area.
John:
The disk has no idea what...
John:
That right is.
John:
It just says that's right to address 123.
John:
It has no idea what's in address 123.
John:
It has no idea that address 123 is the thing that tells you that these blocks are allocated.
John:
It doesn't know where those blocks are.
John:
It doesn't understand the file system.
John:
It's just a big block addressable storage device.
John:
The SSD mechanism has no way to know...
John:
oh, by the file system writing that piece of information, what that means is all these blocks belonging to this one gig file are now technically free.
John:
And I should feel free to reuse them for any other writes that get sent to me.
John:
It doesn't know that.
John:
It's just like if it sees a write come in, it says, where can I put this data?
John:
Where can I put this data?
John:
It doesn't think it can put it where that one gig file was because the only write that got sent was the, hey, write to address 123 with these numbers.
John:
It doesn't know those numbers mean that one gig of space has now been freed up.
John:
That's what the trim command is for, to send it to say, by the way,
John:
and you know the file system the operating system would say write to this area of the disk to note that this file is gone now and also send the disk controller a command to free up to mark all of these blocks of data as you can use those again and if a subsequent write comes in so there is no there's literally no way that the drive can know it's a different layer of the storage heart because the drive can know that so inevitably without trim no matter what tricks you do everything will fill up which will mean every single write also involves clearing out some area first
John:
our first sponsor this week is cards against humanity and they asked us not to read a sponsor read and instead sent john another toaster to review syracuse are talking about toasters more exciting than a roller coaster will it fit on its countertop i hope the reviews never stop
John:
John, what is the toaster this week?
John:
This week's toaster is another one from Black & Decker, model T01322SBD.
John:
This thing is a two knob, fairly small toaster.
John:
I remember we had the three knob Black & Decker early on and it was kind of like middle of the road.
John:
this two knob thing does most of the bad things that have been discussed previously in all other toasters right it's a pretty it's a nice tour of things that are wrong with toaster oven so wow so you like it yeah so it's got two knobs one of which is a timer knob that you have to repeatedly turn to a precise angle for consistent toasting that's a common flaw the other knob also has to be in the right mode so if you're if you still have to make sure two knobs are adjusted to the right thing to make it toast anything you got to make sure the top one's on toast because if you just turn the bottom one
John:
Oh, I forgot to turn the top when it was on bacon.
John:
I'm slowly making my bread warm instead of toasting it.
John:
It's got a single heating element on the top and the bottom, right in the middle.
John:
They are shielded at least, so that's good.
John:
But the single heating element on top and bottom are just not adequate for a toaster of this size, leading to a ridiculous five minute plus toast time.
John:
I thought it was broken.
John:
I tried it multiple times.
John:
Maybe the bread was a little bit cold.
John:
Maybe it was thicker, like crazy long toast times.
John:
It's just got one element on top, one element on bottom.
John:
They're just not enough for a toaster of this size.
John:
It's not a big toaster, but...
John:
whatever it is it's not getting the job done really really thin wire rack like like i feel like i could crumple it up in my hand that kind of thing you know not that it matters it's not like it's not like the bread is going to fall through the rack but sort of like the i was going to say intangibles but it's not it's the opposite it's tangible like the things that signal quality and durability that really thin rack is not it
John:
the door doesn't really open all the way to 90 degrees like it opens almost to 90 degrees and at the bottom at the limit of its travel it's like springy and bendy it felt like it was going to break off it's just not a nice feeling door the crumb tray that's underneath like a little metal crumb tape you have to tilt the crumb tray to get it out another flaw that we've seen on other toasters which is terrible because if you're not careful you'll tilt it and just spill all the crumbs that on the crumb tray back into the toaster and now how do you get them out
John:
That's the whole point of the crumb tray.
John:
You're supposed to take the crumb tray out with the crumbs on it and dump them so you don't have to take your whole toaster over the garbage or sink or shake it and get the crumbs out.
John:
I mean, it's not as bad as that hybrid toaster, which was just terrible.
John:
Like, if you bought this, it would be okay.
John:
It would get the job done.
John:
The three-knob black inductor is way better.
John:
I didn't look at the price on this one.
John:
What is the price on this?
John:
$38 on Amazon right now.
John:
it seems i don't know what the three knob one was the three knob one was better than this one in all possible ways this is not a great toaster it's like and i was in a department store recently looking at like the toaster oven section of course you were a lot of the ones that were in there i had actually reviewed so that was interesting but i was just looking at them again to say like to survey the field of all these things we're seeing like are we am i just getting crappy toasters because still none of them have been as good as my super expensive toaster and even my super expensive toaster i have complaints about
John:
So I saw the fancier version of my super expensive toaster in the store.
John:
It has crappy knobs, too.
John:
They're better than my knobs a little bit, but still pretty crappy.
John:
Lots of just terrible knobs and very expensive toasters.
John:
It's not hard, people.
John:
Like, remember what was the one we had, the Hamilton Beach one, that actually had good knobs, even though they didn't have, like, they felt good to turn, even though you couldn't tell where the heck they were pointing.
John:
Like, they always blow it.
John:
Yeah, there was no indicator.
John:
There was, but it's really hard to see.
John:
They always blow it in some way.
John:
Like...
John:
and lots of bad doors like if i was if i could talk to the people who are designing toasters like i understand you have to make it cheaply you know you have to have your margins i'm not saying every toaster has to be 200 right i think you can make a decent 40 or 50 toaster if you just concentrate on the right things make make the controls reasonable it doesn't cost any more money to have a good control you don't have to put a fancy lcd screener if you're just gonna have a bunch of knobs just don't make the mistakes of like
John:
having to turn a little ticking thing to the right angle every time oh and by the way this this toaster also ticks it's a quieter tick but it does tick um like having buttons like i feel like you can do a reasonable set of controls that combines the best of knobs and buttons have a door that feels good to open and close have a wire rack that feels like it's sturdy does that really cost that much more it's like it's a box with a door and some knobs and a tray
John:
just concentrate on those things make a nice door make some nice knobs make a nice tray I don't think that's asking for everything and I feel like it's almost like they should take some lessons from kids toys which also have to be cheap but they also have to be durable like the toys on like
John:
The doors and stuff on the little Fisher-Price toys and everything feel so much better than all these toasters.
John:
I continue to be disappointed with the state of toaster ovens.
John:
This one is not as bad as the hybrid toaster, which is the new low bar, but I do not recommend it.
Marco:
It seems like there's only basically two prices the toaster ovens are.
Marco:
They're either $40 or $200.
Marco:
And it seems like among the $40 ones that you've reviewed, that you can get good elements in all of them.
Marco:
If you take the best parts of each one and put them all together, you could make a good toaster.
John:
Or an okay toaster.
John:
We're not asking for it.
John:
It's not amazing, but there's nothing in it that's embarrassing.
John:
It doesn't feel like it's going to fall apart.
John:
It does the job consistently and in a reasonable manner.
Marco:
Now, this toaster I see on the front here, it's advertising that it has even toast technology.
Marco:
Were you able to test the even toast technology and does it stand up to that claim?
John:
It was reasonably even, but for five minutes, it's probably pretty easy to do even toasting if you do it super slow.
John:
When you have a really hot element, that's when you get hot spots.
John:
If you take five minutes, sure, yeah, it's nice and even across the bread.
John:
And being right in the middle of each thing probably helps a lot.
John:
because if you have four elements if you have two on bottom and two on top and you just have the two pieces of toast like if you don't sort of center them over the elements right but this toaster is small enough and there's only one element and it's in the middle that if you just stick toast in there and don't think about it you're probably going to stick it somewhere around the middle back to front wise and it will come out even so it was fine like you know if you want to wait five minutes for your toast it will get the job done
Marco:
And finally, did the staff at the store recognize you?
Marco:
No, this was, I was just a Kohl's.
Marco:
Yeah, but, I mean, how many professional toaster oven reviewers are there in the world?
John:
Uh... Maybe, like, three?
John:
Yeah, I don't know.
John:
They, uh, no one came to help me at all, which is what Kohl's is like, which I didn't need any help, which is fine, uh...
John:
yeah no you mentioned you mentioned the two price ranges like forty dollars and two hundred the the other thing that kills me is the two hundred dollar ones don't feel like two hundred dollar appliances again if you had to make a metal box with a door and knobs and you gave me two hundred dollars to do it i would make damn sure that those doors the doors are better like the doors have little rubber stops in them they open and close in a reasonable way except for the door on my actual toaster which still springs close and tries to burn you but like i said i think that's just just my particular model my particular unit and
John:
and not all this model because everyone else i ask who has this toaster they say no my door stays open fine but anyway the doors are better but the knobs they're just and maybe it's just the breville ones how can you make such a terrible knob it feels like a uh a snap together plastic model from the 80s that the knobs are just barely hanging on there they feel terrible to turn they're wobbly like on the fancy one they made them like fake chrome like shiny you know again like a like a snap together model like when you have the the
Marco:
the you know chrome finished wheels on your snap together model car like they're shiny plastic for 250 i'm not saying you have to give me a metal knob but give me a knob that at least feels good turn and doesn't wobble in my hand well this is i mean this is like like what you've identified here is like this applies to so many different categories of things uh where like you know well thanks a lot to cards against humanity for sponsoring our show once again so what this way to get out of the ad
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So, well, because I'm going to run over the time that I allot for the ads now.
Marco:
But this applies to so many things.
Marco:
You used to have cheap, good, and then commercial slash pro in so many things.
Marco:
Electronics, appliances, stuff like that.
Marco:
And now you still have cheap, good, and commercial slash pro price points on things.
Marco:
But it seems like the middle tier there, like the prosumer kind of level...
Marco:
That, in so many things, is now just like the same cheap garbage that the cheap one is made out of.
Marco:
Doesn't last any longer, isn't of much higher quality, just has like more bells and whistles on it.
Marco:
But it's still a cheap quality thing that you're just paying $200 for.
John:
and i think toaster ovens in particular like an original the original hypocritical episode about this was titled worse and more diverse because like there are so many more toasters in all different shapes and sizes but all of them are crappier and i don't think that's true across the board the great example is like you know any japanese car honda toyota cars the knobs and stuff and those feel great compared to toaster knobs like they're not as nice as obviously bmw or lexus or mercedes controls but they are really really good they put every toaster to shame and you can get that in a honda fit for like fifteen thousand dollars like the cheapest car you can get
John:
like they still have nice turn stocks nice like you know in the grand scheme of things nothing like just this pieces of crap that are on a 200 toaster so it's i feel like it is possible at the price points they want to hit if they cared about it because you don't have to do all the bells and whistles and you don't have to do the actual expensive things of having more heating elements of having a little computer and having an lcd screen and crap like that like we understand you have to hit a price point
John:
pare it down to just heating elements simple you know mechanical analog controls for them a box and a door and just concentrate on the few elements that you touch and make them nice and that's what the cheap car companies do these cars don't have fancy features a honda fit does not have a camera that shows you all around your car but composited out of a bunch of cameras at the corners of your car so you can park without scraping your such a great feature your wheels i know it is it's great
John:
But like they don't have the money for that.
John:
They have the money for a bunch of plastic on a dashboard, a plastic wheel.
John:
And and they they find a way to make parts that are cheap, that are simple to assemble and that feel not like pieces of crap.
Casey:
Okay.
John:
So, what's our first topic this week?
John:
We have follow-up from the chat room.
John:
Do you want to... I missed this one.
John:
I'm assuming Casey put this in there.
John:
I have no idea what you're talking about.
John:
The SSD thing.
John:
Yeah, if they say it in the chat room, it's a real-time follow-up from our secret anonymous tipster who foolishly hangs out in the chat room every week.
John:
Or, as far as we're able to tell, same guy, says, Apple Samsung 8XXX, meaning the 840, 850, whatever series firmware, is not the same as retail drives.
John:
We fix the bugs.
Marco:
i don't know what that means because i bought mine you know from amazon or whatever it's not apple's thing but does apple ship devices with samsung 800 series ssds in them well they have they have like samsung manufactured sticks in the in their various like like the mac pro i think that's i think that's a samsung ssd stick and stuff like that but it's not it's not like packaged in a 2.5 inch driving closure with us with the serial eta port in the back like it's it's just like it's in those little sticks they put in all their computers
Marco:
so that counts as like the the 800 series even though obviously it looks nothing like the things you buy from retail yeah i mean like yeah the tips you're saying now like those are just variants of normal samsung ssds so yeah i'm sure like you know the samsung giant serial number you know m sat a stick thing is say a rebranded 840 pro or something yeah well that doesn't help me or it doesn't help anyone else who bought a you know commercial third party buy it directly from you know samsung branded
John:
thing that looks like a uh you know a little two and a half inch drive but actually has a bunch of chips inside it but anyway yeah apple tends to do that's that's what it means you know apple qualifies their drives to work with trim or not um and you know they test them and they make sure they work and so if you're buying third-party stuff apple's default is uh no we won't enable trim for you because we haven't tested your thing and be careful uh if you haven't tested it either
John:
And I don't know if you I don't know if people have the option of trying to fix the firmware in their Samsung 850 retail drives.
John:
I would not recommend that.
Casey:
And the tipster is saying that, yes, the Apple drives are just variants of normal Samsung SSDs.
Marco:
Have you guys ever run a firmware update on a disk of any sort?
Marco:
I think I have in the past.
John:
It used to have to, like, boot into DOS to do it.
John:
Like, give you, like, a floppy drive to remember that.
John:
And so I would use, like, I use, like, virtual PC.
John:
This is back in the day, you know, before x86 Max.
John:
Use virtual PC to...
John:
be able to use the virtual floppy drive thing to get it to see my it was this convoluted terrifying thing but you know at that point like the drive is empty like i would make sure like before i attempt this get all the data off the drive so then i guess worst case scenario i brick it and have to send it back and they send me a new one but i have done it
Casey:
I don't think I have.
Marco:
Yeah, I did it like once, and it was one of those.
Marco:
It was embarrassingly late in technology that it was requiring me to use a DOS floppy.
Marco:
It was to the point where I had to figure out how to boot a DOS floppy image because the computer I had, of course, didn't have... It was like 2007.
Marco:
It was like some very late time.
Marco:
It's like, wow, we stopped using floppies like 10 years beforehand.
Marco:
Edit your config.sys, right?
Yeah.
Marco:
I actually never was brave enough to do that, even when I was a PC guy.
John:
I think that the line was in an Apple ad back when they were trying to make fun of DOS, which was, you know, the appropriate thing to do because it was ridiculous at the time.
John:
But they had some kid in the ad say, you need to add your config.sys.
John:
Nice.
Marco:
So, Apple Music.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Have you guys listened to Taylor Swift yet?
John:
Nope.
John:
What do you mean yet?
John:
Most of us have heard Taylor Swift already, but I like the fact that it took a large new product initiative from Apple to get you to listen to the songs that everyone has been listening to.
Marco:
To get me to listen to the number one selling album of the last two years or whatever.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, well.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So, it seems like a pretty good service.
Marco:
I mean, have you guys used streaming services before?
Casey:
Yeah, I'm a Spotify user and a fairly devout one.
Casey:
Devout enough that I'm happy enough with it that I've never tried Beats.
Casey:
I've never tried RDO.
Casey:
That doesn't mean they're not better.
Casey:
It doesn't mean that I wouldn't like them more.
Casey:
It's just I've been happy with Spotify and I haven't had any compelling reason to mess with my setup.
Casey:
and uh and so i've been fiddling with apple music over the last 24 hours as we record this recording it on wednesday night and apple music launched uh roughly midday yesterday and i didn't play much with this with the streaming portion of it until today i was mostly just listening to beats one because i was really curious to hear how it was um
Casey:
I like Beats 1.
Casey:
I thought it was entertaining.
Casey:
I thought the music selections were good and varied.
Casey:
Pretty early on, they played a non-English song, which took me aback.
Casey:
And then I thought, you know what, that's pretty cool, actually.
Casey:
If this really is worldwide, I forget the slogan they use over and over and over again.
Casey:
Apparently not enough.
Casey:
Yeah, that's right, because it would have been burned in by now.
Casey:
But anyways, since it's a worldwide radio station, or so they say, the fact that they were playing non-English songs I thought was kind of cool.
Casey:
I don't know Zane Lowe or any of the other DJs from anything, but they all seem pretty entertaining.
Casey:
Today, however, I started playing with what I would call the Spotify-like...
Casey:
features of apple music so that is to say i want to play such and such album by such and such artist right now and it worked just fine but i i've been thinking about it a lot since i've been fiddling with it around lunchtime today and i haven't come up with a good way to describe it but i don't like it and i feel the best way i can describe it and i can't decide if i if this was um
Casey:
If this was the opinion I had before I even tried it, and so now I'm just fitting my experience to my previously held opinion.
Casey:
But it felt like it's a bunch of stuff just stapled onto the side of iTunes, which is already relatively confusing to me to begin with because I don't use iTunes very often.
Casey:
And it just felt weird.
Casey:
Whereas Spotify, it has many of its own UI issues.
Casey:
It has many, many problems and many, many poor choices.
Casey:
But by and large, it does not take me long to figure out how to go to a particular album or to a particular artist or to perform a particular operation.
Casey:
Whereas...
Casey:
As an example, I wanted to see the activity-based playlists that they had set up.
Casey:
A friend of the show, Underscore, had snarkily pointed out that they have a Getting It On playlist, I believe it's called.
Casey:
And so I was going to look and see what these playlists were and what options they were, and it took me literally five minutes to find it because I thought it would be in either the playlist section, but no, that was my playlist in iTunes, traditional iTunes.
Casey:
Then I thought it would be in the For You section.
Casey:
But no, they weren't for me.
Casey:
And so I went looking in every section except the section that it was in, which was, I think, new.
Casey:
Because clearly all these playlists should be in the new section.
Casey:
And so I don't know.
Casey:
I just I'm not saying I don't like it.
Casey:
I'm not saying I'm not going to switch to it.
Casey:
I very well may switch to it.
Casey:
But my initial impression is beats one thumbs up.
Casey:
Apple Music as a streaming on demand service.
Casey:
Thumb to the side.
Casey:
Haven't really decided yet.
Yeah.
John:
You know, when Apple did photos recently, I felt like they kind of wiped the slate clean of all of their past efforts.
John:
Like they had accumulated a lot of history with Aperture and iPhoto.
John:
And clearly they're like, all right, do over, start over from scratch.
John:
Let's bring only what we need with us and give it sort of a migration path.
John:
Uh, and the same thing with like the photo streams, they kind of kept those on, but they, they, you know, they, they get reconceptualized a little bit in the new service with, uh, you know, and I called photo library.
John:
Like they, it was their chance to put a big reset button, right?
John:
And Apple music naming what product naming wise looks like, Oh, you know, all that crap we were doing with iTunes and iTunes match and this, that, and the other thing was, you know, Apple music, let's reset new name, which is going to start over.
John:
But as Casey just pointed out, they didn't, what they did was took the existing mess, which involves iTunes and a bunch of other crap.
John:
and added more stuff to it.
John:
Even iTunes Match is still around and is confusingly different.
John:
We should put this link in the show notes.
John:
Serenity had a good article today explaining, do I need iTunes Match if I have Apple Music?
John:
Do you just want one or the other?
John:
Are there differences?
John:
What are those differences?
John:
It's super confusing.
John:
That's before you even get into...
John:
So the little icon on my iPhone has changed, and now I can't find anything anymore.
John:
And by the way, iTunes 12.2 continues, you know, doesn't even have Apple Music in it, but continues to have more different changes.
John:
It doesn't have Apple Music, right?
John:
Like it doesn't have the streaming stuff in it?
Marco:
iTunes on the desktop, the new version that came out like a few hours after Beats launched.
Marco:
Sorry, Apple Music launched.
Marco:
That has everything.
John:
All right.
John:
So it must have been before it had been updated because the one came out for iOS first.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But anyway, like this is these are features on top of all the existing other features.
John:
Some features are superseded and replaced by new ones.
John:
Some are not.
John:
And some things have different names and they're in different places.
John:
So it's not the sort of clean sheet reset, which makes some sense because it is an additive thing.
John:
It's like, well, we already had the thing where you could download and buy music.
John:
We already had the thing where you could rip your CDs and organize music.
John:
And we already had all these other things and podcasts and syncing your iOS devices and all the other crap you can do in iTunes.
John:
But we didn't have a streaming service.
John:
Now we have a streaming service, and we also have this radio station, and we also have... Boy, there's a lot of crap in there.
John:
And for someone like me who doesn't... I have Spotify installed, and I've used it a few times, but for someone like me who's not... I tend to just want to listen to my music.
John:
All this other stuff is...
John:
I look at all this other stuff and think, in what way does this either help or hurt my ability to listen to music the way I normally listen to it?
John:
Is it going to, for example, scramble all my album and artist metadata as some people are reporting the new version of iTunes has done to them if they had previously used the iTunes match?
John:
Will it let me, say, get higher bitrate DRMP versions of songs that I ripped from CD many years ago?
John:
Like iTunes Match did that.
John:
That was a good feature.
John:
It was a plus.
John:
Will it let me not have access to all of my music on my iPhone but not have to have all my music on my iPhone?
John:
Again, iTunes Match did that.
John:
That was a plus.
John:
apple music stuff i feel like is neutral or a minus because it makes it harder for me to find things that i want to find and the sort of teething you know uh bugs 0.0 release or whatever even though this is kind of like beats music 2 or whatever their their service was called before make me worry about it so i did sign up for the trial but i'm a little bit afraid of the new version of itunes on my mac and
John:
I guess maybe I'll look into the streaming things and try it.
John:
But like it's not a slam on their service.
John:
I can't really judge it because I'm not a streaming music kind of person.
John:
Like I was never into any of the other ones I installed either.
John:
I'm mostly looking at it as a potential harm to my existing music listening habits, which, you know, to Apple's card, they're still trying to support that.
John:
Like you can still listen to music that way if you want to.
John:
and maybe you might still want to subscribe to Apple Music for the iCloud syncing features, but maybe not if you already subscribe to iTunes Match, which is way cheaper.
John:
So anyway, I feel like this is a very confusing situation for me, and I'm not sure what to make of it.
Marco:
Yeah, it seems like, you know, I totally agree with you on, you know, the problem of bolting all this onto their existing very complicated iTunes slash music setup that, you know, they have so much legacy there.
Marco:
And, you know, comparing it with Photos was apt, you know, but with Photos, they did a clean start.
Marco:
And that was a massive engineering effort, it seems.
Marco:
I mean, it seemed like, first of all, I think it was late.
Marco:
But it was also, you know, it was a massive effort, I would imagine, to get, to basically, you know, try to replace iPhoto and Aperture with this new thing and do a pretty decent job at a 1.0, plus this massive cloud backend stuff and, you know, and having iOS match up the whole time with the desktop.
Marco:
Like, that's just a massive effort that had to go into Photos to make that happen.
Marco:
I would love if they did the same thing with iTunes and deprecate iTunes and have a new app just called Music, even on Mac, and have a new Music.app that only does music.
Marco:
And even, you know, leave, like, videos and stuff.
Marco:
Make a separate videos app.
Marco:
You know, just like, you know, they split off iBooks and that was fine.
Marco:
They even now kicked audiobooks out of the music on iOS and left that in the iBooks app now.
Marco:
They can do the same thing on Mac.
Marco:
You know, like, basically, like, slowly divest iTunes of the things that it does that aren't music.
John:
And fold iTunes Match into it.
John:
Like, the fact that iTunes Match still exists, like...
John:
there should be one new thing that encompasses the functionality is fine but there should be one new thing with various different price points and features like it should supersede iTunes match in the same way that photo streams still exist in the new photos things but they're reconceptualized as a share section of iPhoto like so if you had existing ones that are there and you can make new ones but it's like
John:
You know, it's under a new umbrella, a new name, a new pricing structure.
John:
There's just one thing you have to know about, not seven layers of legacy things that you have to know about and understand how they interact.
Casey:
Right.
John:
That's how it should be presented and conceptualized.
John:
And like you said, the implementation wise, if you're going to try to conceptualize it is that you also have to get it out of the app that you use to sync your iPod shuffle or whatever.
Marco:
And I think that's the main problem is they have all this massive legacy stuff that iTunes still has to do.
Marco:
There's still nothing else that can do a lot of these roles.
Marco:
And yes, you have iOS devices that can set themselves up now without a computer and never be synced to iTunes at all.
Marco:
But there's still... A, there's still a lot of people who do sync it to iTunes or who do use iTunes to manage their iOS devices.
Marco:
And B, there's all those devices that keep selling called iPods that still need iTunes.
Marco:
So it's like there's still...
Marco:
And granted, they're not selling a ton of iPods, but they are still selling them, and they might be getting new colors in a couple of weeks or whatever.
Marco:
It seems like the massive amount of engineering effort that was required to dump iPhoto and Aperture and make this new Photos thing with this new iCloud Photos library, the corresponding...
Marco:
scale of the job to do that for itunes and music was probably just too big to do in a reasonable amount of time and it's just it's not time for that yet and i don't know if it ever will be but it's i think i think it's clear that apple believed it was not time for that yet and they probably had to move faster to get you know they were clearly like like the relevance of of the itunes music store to to buy music outright i think was declining faster than they probably expected and
John:
Well, they had plenty of time to react like that.
John:
That's something we say for the context here.
John:
This is a me to move.
John:
Apple should have had a streaming service long ago.
John:
They spent a long time getting one.
John:
They ended up having to acquire a company to accelerate their ability to have one.
John:
But if you had asked, you know, the rise of all the streaming services, it's not like this happened overnight.
John:
And, you know, it.
John:
It seems to have caught Apple flat-footed, but it shouldn't have because there was plenty of time for them to realize this is a thing they should have.
John:
And it seems like they just couldn't get it together and ended up having to make an acquisition to bring that to bear.
John:
And my favorite hobby horse with the whole server-side stuff, and which, to Apple's credit, they're actually making some motions on is...
John:
It's like, oh, we did that thing with photos.
John:
It was a big effort.
John:
We got to do that for music too.
John:
We don't have time.
John:
Like it's too much effort.
John:
If you concentrate on producing infrastructure for network services, instead of concentrating like, oh, we got to redo photos.
John:
If you make infrastructure, like say CloudKit, that is an example of infrastructure.
John:
If you do a good job with your general purpose infrastructure, lots of sort of online powered applications have similar needs.
John:
And I'm hammered on this again and again.
John:
That's like all Google does, it seems like, is make incredibly powerful infrastructure.
John:
upon which they can build all sorts of applications each one of those applications doesn't have to reinvent the wheel and find a new way to store its data and stuff so i would hope that some of the effort they put into the back end for photos would give them a leg up on potentially in the future uh rejiggering i mean it's tough as if they bought it it's not something they did in-house beats is what it is they can't like rewrite all beats code and you know overnight or whatever but like
John:
i'm hoping some of that infrastructure work that they're finally doing will pay dividends in like now it shouldn't be such a herculean effort to do the same thing you did for photos for itunes because a you've done it once before and b you should be able to reuse a lot of that work a lot of the expertise a lot of the experience a lot of the code a lot of the server side stuff a lot of the frameworks you know that should help you accelerate the you know when they have to do the music app that is like oh it's a
John:
all the things they did for the photos app i mean that's like framework stuff they seem to understand that like oh collection view that would be useful everywhere we should make that and have it everywhere core animation that would be that's that's client-side infrastructure we've talked about this before server-side infrastructure how do you store a bunch of data how do you get it on demand in a reliable way and like have a database uh to store all the metadata and you know how do i make all your stuff be in the cloud and only parts of it on your devices and that's
Marco:
what they're trying to do with photos and music is actually data volume wise an easier problem because photos are bigger than music so for the most part yeah i mean i i think really the challenges we see here are purely that you know it's the same thing like every time itunes gets a redesign like the the desktop every time there's a new design for itunes
Marco:
It really just makes the app harder and more confusing to use because they can't actually remove features from it for various reasons.
Marco:
So instead, they just hide things in different modes and drawers and stuff.
Marco:
And it's weird.
Marco:
You just get this impossible-to-use application that is extremely complicated but is trying to look simple.
John:
And they move things around a lot, and that upsets people who are like, I knew where that was before, and now I don't.
John:
And it's like...
John:
I bet if you asked them, they'd say, okay, if you knew where it was before, it's weird that we moved it.
John:
But if you've never used it before, the new location is better for reasons X, Y, and Z. And maybe they're right.
John:
And maybe they're even right that there are more new users than there are existing ones.
John:
But just constantly reshuffling the deck chairs, especially kind of like when they change the whole iTunes DJ functionality and replace it with UpNext.
John:
Not only did people know how the iTunes DJ functionality worked, but it was around long enough that people were like, kind of get into a groove with it.
John:
They have kind of like a workflow of how they play music at parties or whatever involving iTunes DJ or whatever that feature was called.
John:
And then it was replaced with Upnext.
John:
They can say, oh, Upnext is better for reasons X, Y, and Z. It's like, but I can't reproduce my workflow.
John:
It's, you know, not that iTunes is, you know, like, you know, a desktop publishing application or Photoshop or whatever, but...
John:
You're just constantly moving things around to try to find maybe this arrangement will be more pleasing.
John:
But like you said, Marco, if you keep the same set of things and you don't want to give up anything, which you probably don't because it's not like there's lots of unessential functionality.
John:
It's just like the functionality of seven apps in one.
John:
Moving it around just pisses people off who you're experienced, loyal users.
John:
And you can't actually make it that much simpler because all the crap is still there somewhere.
Marco:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
And by the way, there's the big Windows question of how do you enable these things for people on Windows so they need a bunch of crap for that.
Marco:
There's obviously tons of technical debt here for things like, I still have to quit my music player when I upgrade my developer compiler tools.
Marco:
because they're related.
Marco:
It's like there's so many weird little tie-ins to iTunes that have been accumulating over the years that I think any kind of meaningful change to it is extremely unlikely to happen just because it seems like it's never going to be worth the probably surprisingly large engineering effort to substantially improve it and break things up and start clean.
John:
Well, you said never, and we know about that.
John:
But anyway.
John:
Only for the timescale.
John:
Thus far.
John:
Yeah, that's come up recently.
John:
I'm trying to figure out if I ever actually said that or if you guys said it as an attempt to characterize and mock my line of reasoning.
John:
And so far, no one has found.
John:
They found me saying it in reply to Casey saying it back to me, but I don't.
John:
know if i ever said that but anyway underscore will find it yeah he finds everyone tried and they thought they'd found it but really they just found casey saying it like snidely so it's obvious that at some point previously that like it had come up before if i remember correctly i think it was when i was saying apple didn't really need to replace objective c uh and you were saying on an infinite time scale yeah the argument you're getting at i did make but i'm saying like those exact words okay
John:
you know because it keeps being called like my infinite timescale argument and like i guess like it's more like that's that's marco's name marco's snide characterization of my much more subtle and nuanced argument right yeah dirt beach mud lake or maybe i actually said that i'm i'm willing to believe that i actually said it too i just don't remember it because
John:
so long ago but anyway yeah itunes uh something's gonna have to be done eventually for now they just are content to keep changing the icon and moving crap around in the ui but you know ios got i mean i don't know how new the ios app is like it's newish certainly there's less technical debt in the ios one and they didn't move crap around a lot and if you that's the thing like if you
John:
even if you don't sign up for apple music a lot of the options it seems like are moved around or hidden or not there and you actually have to go into the settings app and say apple music off and then it looks more like the old music player app um i did sign up for the trial and by the way if you sign up for the free trial it's like a three month free trial which is pretty generous as far as free trials go um
John:
there it will auto renew for whatever price you sign up for but you can turn off the auto renewal somebody tweeted instructions for doing that i followed their instructions and it wasn't that bad it was like go to your apple id go to manage and then go turn off auto renew so it's kind of slimy that they turn auto renew on by default i'd rather have it say
John:
you know like a squarespace real free trial like it's a free trial and at the end of that then we'll do this say hey you've been using this for three months if you like it pay money rather than just saying um oh uh we're just going to sign you up for auto renew i i suppose it would pop up send the email or whatever like all the subscriptions do and say by the way your you know iCloud storage is about to renew in six days like to give you a chance to cancel or whatever but it would be nicer if they didn't have the auto renew but
John:
apparently apple is not that far in the light side of the forest that they're not going to but you can turn it off but anyway i have signed up to do that i can still find my music i am now slightly fearful from reading the horror stories of what it might do to my metadata and stuff for all my songs so i'm kind of warily watching it and being careful with how i play back my music
Casey:
So to turn off the auto renew, if you are in Apple Music in just about any tab, it looks like you hit the little avatar profile person in the upper left.
Casey:
And then there's a button for a row for view Apple ID.
Casey:
And then in there, there's a subscription section.
Casey:
There's a manage button.
Casey:
And then in there, you can say it says your membership, Apple Music membership, and you can turn it off in there.
Casey:
So, just FYI.
Marco:
Yeah, it seems like it's very, very similar to the auto-renewing subscriptions that they have in iOS for things like newsstand publications.
Marco:
By the way, newsstand is dead.
Marco:
Yay!
Marco:
And other things, any kind of auto-renewing thing.
Casey:
It's funny you bring that up because as I went through the stands to confirm I knew how to do it, I noticed that I had one other thing in subscriptions.
Casey:
Would you like to guess what it is?
Casey:
The magazine?
Casey:
That's correct.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
Although it shouldn't be billing anymore.
Marco:
I think it's... No, no, no.
Marco:
It's expired.
Casey:
Yeah, well...
Casey:
But either way, I thought that was kind of funny.
Casey:
So why don't you tell us about something else that's cool?
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Harry's offers factory-direct pricing at a fraction of the big brand's price.
Marco:
So by my calculations, Harry's blades are about half the price of things like the most comparable blades, I would say, having tried both a lot now.
Marco:
I would say they are extremely comparable to the Gillette Fusion, the five-blade Gillette cartridge things.
Marco:
These are not double-edged safety blades, which I've tried before as well.
Marco:
I honestly find both Harry's and Gillette better than double-edged safety blades for sensitive skin because I used to be a shaving nerd.
Marco:
Anyway, long story.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
No, and I stopped being a shaving nerd once I realized that I just like the cartridges better than the straight razor stuff, or than the double-edged stuff.
Marco:
Because they really is, like for sensitive skin, these blades are awesome.
Marco:
So Harry's blades really are top quality blades that are literally about half the price of what you find from the big guys like Gillette.
Marco:
now they have a starter set it's an amazing deal so you for 15 bucks you get a razor moisturizing shave cream or gel your choice and three razor blade cartridges when you need more blades they are just two dollars each or less an eight pack is just 15 bucks a 16 pack of the blades is just 25 the handles that harry's has and the cream and everything all the other stuff about it is miles ahead first of all the designs are really tasteful
Marco:
they're they're kind of modern but like retro inspired um so it's almost like a mad men kind of aesthetic on a lot of them attractive tasteful designs like you know you you get like other razors and it looks like a kid's toy or like a transformers slash you know droid commercial kind of aesthetic it's really weird when you get other blades it has like these like weird tacky plastic blue accents and stuff hairy stuff is just nice it's tastefully designed
Marco:
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Marco:
We've heard from so many women that say these are great and that they use them all the time.
Marco:
And women's razors face almost all of the same challenges as men's.
Marco:
There's some differences here and there, but for the most part, you're solving the same problem, basically.
Marco:
And women's razors, the landscape of mega-brand women's razors is just as miserable as the landscape for men's razors.
Marco:
And really, we've heard everyone uses Harry's.
Marco:
Everyone loves Harry's.
Marco:
Check it out.
Marco:
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Marco:
Use promo code ATP to save $5 off your first purchase.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Harry's.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So anything else about Apple Music?
John:
Yeah, I thought the the sort of first run experience where it shows you like the artist bubbles, you can tap them multiple times to make them bigger.
John:
And that shows the picture of the artist on them.
John:
They demoed that in the keynote when they were introducing it.
John:
And I went through it and I was disappointed for a couple of reasons.
John:
One, the little bubbles it gave me.
John:
I was looking for my favorite bands and they were not there.
John:
So I'm not sure how it was coming up with the button.
John:
You could do like more artists.
John:
I kept hitting more artists, hoping it eventually would rotate in some of my favorite bands.
John:
Because I think that, you know, if it's trying to get an idea of what kind of music I like, you know, I'd like to tap the bubbles for U2, R.M., Bruce Springsteen, Radiohead.
John:
Like, that's a good start right there.
John:
Right.
John:
You know, we can branch out and keep going.
John:
Right.
John:
And those just weren't there.
John:
But two.
John:
I don't think it should have had to ask me at all because I've been an iTunes match subscriber for a long time.
John:
It's got all my plate play counts for like for years worth of cumulative play counts across all devices.
John:
It's got that in the cloud somewhere, right?
John:
Why does it have to ask me who my favorite artists are?
John:
Don't ask me.
John:
You've got the actual data.
John:
No matter what I say.
John:
Like, I mean, you can have both.
John:
I tweeted this.
John:
I thought it was ridiculous that they didn't use this information.
John:
There's a couple of angles.
John:
One, the angle is you don't have to do that bubble thing.
John:
And if you don't do it, maybe they do use your thing in the cloud.
John:
If that's the case, then their sort of onboarding process did not make that clear to me.
John:
That if I just skip the bubbles entirely and don't deal with it, it will just use the information it has about my listening habits.
John:
That was not made clear to me during the thing, if it's even true.
John:
And the second thing is like...
John:
having both of those options maybe i don't want you to use my usage data maybe i think my tastes have changed recently maybe i want to give a time window like there's lots of i just felt like there's lots of things they could have and should have done and if they are doing them they could have communicated it better it wasn't a nice first run experience and a lot of people said like well that's a google kind of thing to do like where they where they make it clear that they know you're listening experience like
John:
we know they know we know how do you think your play count when you play something on your phone that you look at the play count in itunes because you have itunes match it increments over there like we know they know this information we have that's how itunes match works right and even if it wasn't in the cloud even if it was just on your device even on on a given device you have at least like a couple weeks or months of years of play count data depending on how long you've had the device so even if you stayed on device
John:
you can still look up that information and i would have liked the onboarding process to say we do or do not know something about your habits either because you just got this phone you never subscribed to itunes match you don't listen to itunes you listen to spotify like let it let it tell the person how much it thinks it knows about your habits and say would you like us to use what we know of your habits over the x number of months or the x number you know some way of presenting to them to say this is how much we know about you do you want us to use that information to do your recommendations do you or do you want to pick new things
John:
and then go through the bubbles process and then have the bubbles process be a little bit nicer about uh you know guessing which artist it wants to put in the mix like maybe it's because maybe just go by your age like that would be i don't know what kind of algorithms they use but age would probably give them a good start right you know maybe they don't have that demographic information either but again i don't know how it's coming up with the bubbles but whatever algorithm it was using the bubbles were not matching up with me like it was it was bands that i had not heard of that were probably bands that the youngsters like
John:
Um, and it just would not bring up a bubble for any of my like top five or top seven favorite bands, no matter how many times I had, uh, more artists.
John:
Um,
John:
yeah so that was that was disappointing other people were saying that the recommendation bubbles led them to a bunch of playlists that really nailed their taste and even after i went through the bubbles and picked the best ones that i could when i saw like the sort of page for you or recommendations for you they weren't terrible so that makes me think it really is using the itunes match information behind the scenes which again makes me question why the bubbles were there but anyway uh the bubbles are a neat ui but the the onboarding experience for apple music for me was not good
Casey:
So real-time follow-up, sort of, kind of.
Casey:
I was fiddling with Apple Music on my phone while I was listening to you guys talk, and I went to the Connect tab to see what was there.
Casey:
And I'll start by saying that I got subscribed to a bunch of artists I could not possibly care less about when I first got onboarded with the whole Connect thing.
Casey:
That said, I went through and unselected most of them, kept the ones I liked, and then selected a couple others that I really enjoy.
Casey:
And so if I were to pick my favorite band right now, and this has been the case for a few years, and I've mentioned it, I think, before, it's this band called Mute Math.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
So I was scrolling through Connect, and the second item after a Dave Matthews entry is an entry from Mute Math where apparently a local magazine from here in Richmond sat down with them either before or after the concert that Aaron and I went to.
Casey:
That was a couple hours away from here.
Casey:
I think it was last month.
Casey:
And I had no idea this existed.
Casey:
I follow the entire band on Twitter.
Casey:
I follow the band's account on Twitter.
Casey:
I had no idea that this was a thing.
Casey:
And so when the show's over tomorrow or something, I'm going to go ahead and read this interview with pretty much my favorite band from a local magazine.
Casey:
I had no earthly idea.
Casey:
So that's a pretty cool thing so far.
Casey:
And the Connect thing seems like it's being populated by a handful of people.
Casey:
Somehow Tim McGraw's in here.
Casey:
I'm not really sure why, but...
Casey:
But no, I'm impressed that I've already discovered something I would not have known about otherwise.
John:
I think it just makes you follow everybody and every artist in your collection.
John:
Its initial follow list is everybody who you have music from.
Marco:
I think that's great.
Marco:
For years, I've had this problem where I will have five albums from a band.
Marco:
And they'll come out with a new album that I won't know about because I don't follow the news that well.
Marco:
And I'll discover it like months or years later.
Marco:
Like, oh, my God, I would have bought this years ago.
Marco:
Why didn't I know about this album?
Marco:
And they've had for a long time some kind of like artist alert system where you could say like, you know, alert me whenever this artist has a new release or something.
Marco:
But you had to manually enable that for everything.
Marco:
And it just seemed like the obvious choice would be just look at any music I have, any artist in my collection, especially any artist for which I own full albums.
Marco:
Just notify me whenever, just have some news feed area or some notification somewhere.
Marco:
Email me.
Marco:
You email me for all sorts of other garbage.
Marco:
Email me whenever any artist who I've bought music from in the past releases a new album.
John:
Do you think that's the right default?
John:
Any artists?
John:
Because I have tons of things that like I have two tracks by this artist, one track by this artist.
John:
Like, I think it's OK to have that option because manually following all the artists in your thing would be tedious.
John:
But I'm not entirely sure that should be the default.
John:
Like, I feel like most people have a handful of artists that they're really interested in new releases from and a long tail of artists that they have one or two tracks from.
Marco:
Yep, I agree.
Marco:
Really?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Maybe I'm weird because I'm a full album kind of person, but I don't know.
John:
I don't know who some of these artists are.
John:
I'm going through it now.
John:
Maybe this is some tracks from my kids or whatever, but like The Secret Sisters?
John:
I don't even know who that is.
Casey:
Yeah, there definitely were entries that I did not know the artist, or maybe I had a single track from them from like back when I was in college or something like that.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And I'm not going to, you know, I know who Toto is, but I'm not going to follow them.
John:
I'm not awaiting the new Toto album.
John:
That's going to be, you know what I mean?
John:
Unfollow.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
It's, I didn't like the onboarding experience, which should sound familiar.
Casey:
But by and large, I didn't think it was, I don't think it's bad so far.
Casey:
So we'll see.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Anything else on Apple Music?
Marco:
Honestly, I've only listened to it for, what, a day right now?
Marco:
I haven't spent too much time with it, but I like it a lot so far.
Marco:
I've already listened to a few albums that I wouldn't have jumped to buy,
Marco:
But because I can listen to them now for free slash no additional cost, I will gladly listen to the album.
Marco:
And for a couple of them, I thought, you know, I might want to buy this.
Marco:
For a couple of them, I thought, you know, I'm really glad I didn't buy this.
Marco:
But that was interesting.
Marco:
Or I enjoyed it for that 40 minutes, but I don't want to hear it again.
Marco:
This is obviously me discovering what everybody else in the world discovered years ago when streaming services started to become a thing.
Marco:
But this is kind of nice.
Marco:
I like this, and I can see why it changes the way people buy and pay for music so much, because it is very compelling.
Marco:
And this is... If everything they said pans out, you know, if...
Marco:
If what they are attempting to do ends up being what they're actually doing in the way that they have the human curation aspect and the playlist and everything, if that ends up being good and staying good, this is going to be great for me because I've tried other services in the past.
Marco:
A long time ago, I tried Pandora.
Marco:
I tried Spotify.
Marco:
I briefly tried RDO.
Marco:
And then for a day, I tried Beats before I realized they didn't even have a real Mac app.
Marco:
My problem is that I don't...
Marco:
I don't find new music on my own very well.
Marco:
And the systems they've had in the iTunes store to date, where they basically just have people who bought this also bought this list of crap at the bottom, that has been terrible for me.
Marco:
I've spent so much time exploring those, previewing those albums, and trying to see, like, okay, I'll go to a band I love, and I'll see the people who bought also bought section at the bottom, and it's just a bunch of garbage.
Marco:
I can't imagine why...
Marco:
people will buy those two things together.
Marco:
And so the human curation aspect, so far in the handful of playlists that I've listened to that have been like the feature playlist kind of things where it looks like some person was involved, I've liked it.
Marco:
It has given me new music.
Marco:
It has introduced me to new stuff in a way that...
Marco:
All of the algorithmic things in the previous services I've tried, plus the iTunes recommendations under their purchased albums, those have never gotten there for me.
Marco:
They've never been good enough to stick with me.
Marco:
So far, this looks promising.
Marco:
So I'm looking forward to this.
Marco:
And that's what everyone always was saying about beats, about beats music when it was called that.
Marco:
that they were very good at that.
Marco:
And the only reason I didn't give that a chance, again, was because they didn't really have a Mac app.
Marco:
Now this seems like this could really be something for people like me who are too old to find good music on their own.
John:
How do you find the recommendations of services that are, say, better than Apple at doing this type of thing, like maybe Amazon or Netflix?
John:
Netflix, I guess, is the best example.
John:
People who like this movie also like this movie.
John:
Do you find that Netflix... Are you just sort of...
John:
So don't find the people who like also like conceptually is a good thing or is it just that Apple's implementation is crappy and it just says people like this also bought Taylor Swift's 1989 because everybody bought it and their algorithm is stupid.
Marco:
I've generally found those those recommendation type things to be better than my opinion of Apple's.
Casey:
Can you tell us about one more thing that's awesome?
Casey:
And then I think I have a couple more thoughts about this, and John might as well.
Marco:
Absolutely.
Marco:
Our final sponsor this week is Casper.
Marco:
Casper is an online retailer of mattresses, which sounds crazy, but trust me, it works.
Marco:
So they are an online retailer of premium mattresses for a fraction of the price of most mattresses.
Marco:
Now, for years, you've had things like memory foam, where they provide great support, but a lot of people are not...
Marco:
They're not big fans of the way memory foam feels or like a smell that it might have or just like the general consistency of it touching their skin or it's too hot for them.
Marco:
So what Casper does is they have a hybrid mattress.
Marco:
It combines latex foam and memory foam.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Yep, absolutely.
John:
Yeah, my parents were just visiting and one of them slept on the Casper mattress we have in the guest room.
John:
And after they went back home, I got an email forwarded from my sister who was saying, what was the name of that mattress that we slept on?
John:
Because she's looking for them.
John:
So rave reviews from the from the parents coming over to sleep on them.
Marco:
Nice.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, so Casper, these are good mattresses, and they know that buying online is risky.
Marco:
At times, everything we buy online sounded ridiculous.
Marco:
The idea of buying clothes or shoes online initially sounded ridiculous.
Marco:
Oh, how am I going to try those on?
Marco:
Well, people figured out, oh, okay, we'll just have a good return policy and have fast shipping and everything, and that makes it better.
Marco:
So Casper, they cover you there.
Marco:
100-night return policy so that you can try it for 100 nights.
Marco:
And if you don't like it, you can return it.
Marco:
There's free delivery.
Marco:
They say they have painless returns.
Marco:
Because once it's unpacked, it's kind of hard to box it up.
Marco:
So they will help you arrange for that if you want to send it back.
Marco:
But chances are you won't.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So, generally speaking, for a good mattress, a good memory foam style mattress, you're going to pay maybe $1,500 for a queen or a king.
Marco:
Casper mattresses...
Marco:
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Marco:
These are incredibly good prices.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to Casper for sponsoring the show.
Marco:
For better nights and brighter days.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So I wanted to quickly build on what you were saying, Marco, about streaming services.
Casey:
I'm not surprised that neither of you necessarily said that streaming services had worked that well for you in the past.
Casey:
I used to be a music listener like I think you guys are, which is you have a batch of music that you tend to listen to.
Casey:
You have your library and you stray here and there.
Casey:
But generally speaking, you're pretty darn content with what you got.
Casey:
I don't know what switch flipped in my mind, but over time I got more and more into hearing more and more eclectic things and satisfying very random cravings at very random times.
Casey:
And what I love about being a Spotify user, and this should be applicable to Apple Music as well, is that I can listen to damn near anything I want, anytime I want, immediately.
Casey:
And that's what's so appealing to me about streaming services.
Casey:
I never even got that into Spotify in terms of their radio stations, in terms of whatever curation they may have.
Casey:
And I agree that I've heard constantly about how great the curation is on Beats Music.
Casey:
And so I just loved being able to listen to anything, anytime.
Casey:
And Spotify also has some really great...
Casey:
um community features particularly around playlists so for example aaron and myself have football season tickets to uh the university of virginia and we have a shared playlist with the guy that we go with that we will any any one of the three of us can just add songs to that playlist on spotify which works out really well i have no earthly idea if that's possible on apple music i doubt it but i haven't tried um
Casey:
And so in a lot of ways, Spotify has worked really well for me and I really, really enjoy it.
Casey:
And I enjoyed enough that I think it took me a day or two to sign up for the $10 a month fee for Spotify that I've been paying for like two or three years now.
Casey:
So I would encourage you to do exactly what you did, Marco, and give it a shot and just kind of try poking around and seeing what you can find.
Casey:
Because I think you might be surprised at how much interesting and good music you can find, even if all that ends up happening is you quit, you common, or you very often fall back to the things you already know and love.
Casey:
And the other thing I wanted to ask both of you guys is, did you have a chance to listen to Beats 1 at all?
Casey:
And I'll start with you, Marco.
Casey:
You can probably predict my answer.
Casey:
You either didn't or you heard it for 10 seconds and decided you hated it.
Marco:
The latter, pretty much.
Marco:
Everyone's saying it's very good.
Marco:
So I listened for, I don't know, five or six songs.
Marco:
Didn't hear a single thing that I liked at all.
Marco:
Each song, I wanted to turn it off during...
Marco:
But I figured, oh, let me give it a little bit more time.
Marco:
So it's fine.
Marco:
I'm sure it's great for a lot of people.
Marco:
It's just not the kind of music I like.
Casey:
So now you know how everyone feels when they listen to Phish.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
I mean, I think it'll be interesting to see how this does because it really is bringing many of the benefits of radio stations kind of back or to a different area where they weren't really before.
Marco:
But it also brings most of the drawbacks of radio stations.
Marco:
Everyone's already very tired of hearing their station ID and their overlay, their talkovers and everything.
Marco:
You can't skip a song if you don't like it because it's live.
Marco:
And you can't really go back either.
Marco:
It seems like they have brought most of the annoyances and limitations of radio stations with them.
Marco:
And most of that's out of necessity.
Marco:
If they're going to do this, they kind of have to do it that way for the most part.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
it seems like it is bringing into the modern age a format that is... It's almost like the skeuomorphism of radio.
Marco:
It's like they copied all of the limitations and annoyances along with the core of it, much of which is kind of inseparable.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So, you know, it's fine.
Marco:
I'm sure people will like it.
Marco:
Maybe if I was having a party, I might put that on or something where I just wanted to put on something that would make me sound cool.
Marco:
If that's even possible, probably isn't.
Marco:
But I don't see myself listening to it, really.
Casey:
All right, John, have you listened to it at all?
John:
I didn't bother listening to it, and my additional point on Apple Music is basically just made by Marco.
John:
First of all, actually getting back to Casey's characterization of the I have my collection of music and that's that, I would adjust that slightly to say the way I listen to music is...
John:
is i have my collection of music and i'm always on the lookout for additions but the key is i'm looking for additions to my collection of music i'm so if i was ever sort of you know one way you can do it is you can graze like just listen to a bunch of music travel around links or whatever you can also do it the same way i find a lot of things now which is recommendations from people who i know who have similar tastes to me and things you see on social media and sort of the overwhelming recommendation of a
John:
have a whole bunch of people in your circle tell you lady gaga is not just another you know manufactured pop star even though that's what you think about them for the first six months they're out maybe you should look at you know but the whole activity is do a bunch of crap and add to my collection of music so it's not a static collection it does grow and it grows slowly right but
John:
I add not just new songs, but entire new artists and new bands get added to the collection.
John:
So it is a dynamic growing thing.
John:
But the essential question is when it comes time to listen to music, do you want to listen to a bunch of music picked by somebody else or listen to quote unquote your music and listening to your music doesn't mean that you don't ever want to change your music.
John:
You do.
John:
You want your, you want to discover like Marco, you want to discover new music that you will like.
John:
It's just a difference.
John:
And when it comes time to do the listening part, not the discovery part,
John:
What do you want to do?
John:
And I just want to listen to my music, right?
John:
So that's why I didn't even bother listening to Beats 1, which I think is probably fine, but it's just not how I listen to music.
John:
And the other angle on Apple Music that Marco was getting at was, and I've seen a lot of other people talking about this, this is, you know, this, not that, you know, people talk about it as if Apple's the first one to do it, but this, Spotify, Rdio, all these things.
John:
are interesting in that they are bringing radio to a generation of people who are much younger than us obviously who didn't grow up with radio as as big a dominant force in their life as it was in our lives right not that they didn't know what radio was and didn't listen to it or whatever but it but like
John:
The kids of the iPod generation, when it was technically feasible for you to have a huge collection of music with you at all times, that enabled a lot more people to do what I do, which is to have a massive collection of your music and listen to that instead of just saying I'm going to listen to these.
John:
things coming over the airwaves you know because you're on your little transistor ready you couldn't have your whole record collection with you it was gigantic like you need a record player it needs to be not bouncing around you know even the cd players with skip protection like you can have one or two cds right the people who grew up in the ipod era this whole concept of someone else is going to pick a bunch of songs and play them to me live uh is something that they're familiar with tangentially but you
John:
wasn't their primary interface to music so there's some novelty to it like the sort of the radio skeuomorphism that's it's it's kind of retro and there's also it's also novel and some people like that type of thing like if your taste aligns well with the taste of the person who is programming that radio station uh that can be good for you and also i'm hoping that these internet reincarnations of radio stations
John:
Get rid of a lot of the crap that defined old radio stations in terms of the things that you were played had little to do with the taste of any individual person, whether that taste is good or bad and much more to do with what record companies were pushing or possibly paying to be played.
John:
So I'm hoping it does away with that as well.
John:
But like Marco said, like...
John:
the ipod era for people who grew up with radio freed us from the tyranny of radio stations because it's usually maybe only four or five radio stations that came in good at your house and there's the classic rock station the oldie station the alternative station the the heavy metal station and like npr and a few like your options were so limited and it's like
John:
I don't want to listen to what other people want to play for me.
John:
I know the music that I like.
John:
The beauty of the iPod was that it freed us from all of that.
John:
And bringing it back is not tempting me to go back to that old world.
John:
But for the people who never experienced that world or never fled it to go to the iPod, the same people who are asking for an FM tuner to be added for their iPods for years and years, Beats 1 and that sort of internet radio station is...
John:
intentionally removing the ability to uh you know skip tracks or even pause or rewind or anything like that could be an interesting novelty and if that if that format is actually a thing and not just an accident of history not just like well in the back of the old days we had to do radio this way because of these technical limitations but once we didn't we never did that again like if it turns out that
John:
It actually is a way people want to listen to music and not just a technical limitation.
John:
It's good that all these streaming services are also saying, by the way, not everything about radio is stupid.
John:
There may still be a mass appeal to a DJed programmed, you know, quote unquote radio station on the Internet.
John:
So even though I still think it's not for me, it is definitely worthwhile for everyone to figure out whether that whether that's still a thing.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I would say in many ways, it is similar to the problem that newspapers and magazines face, especially magazines, where, and I know, having tried to run one, and not having succeeded, really, you know, one of the problems is, like, when you have something like a magazine or a radio station, you are, like, prescribing to people, here's what you're going to see, here's the package of things, you're going to see this, then this, then this, and are you going to hear this, and this, and this, and
Marco:
So we have moved on from that technologically.
Marco:
People are accustomed to more freedom.
Marco:
People are accustomed to being able to pick and choose and seek around and do whatever they want.
Marco:
And if you say, you know, in the case of a magazine, I'm going to charge you X every month and I'm going to give you these 10 articles and they're going to be on a variety of topics and you might care about one of them.
Marco:
That worked for a long time when there were really no good alternatives.
Marco:
But now people can just find the few good things they like online from all sorts of different sources, not even just you.
Marco:
And they like that better.
Marco:
And it's kind of better for everybody that way, except for maybe the publishers.
Marco:
But it's better for the readers, for the consumers.
Marco:
And radio, I think, has a similar problem of like you already have this world where everybody can have their own program station tailored exactly to their likes.
Marco:
If they don't like a song, they can skip it.
Marco:
If they want to play it again, they can just play it again.
Marco:
If they want to buy it, you know, it's all integrated and everything.
Marco:
Like the world we have that isn't radio stations is really nice and really advanced.
Marco:
And we are all accustomed to that now.
Marco:
So to try to go back to the way radio was, and I'm using it in the past tense because let's face it, radio has been dead for a long time.
Marco:
To go back to the way radio was, now, once we've all moved on with how we think music should work and how music does work everywhere else, I think it's really a problem.
Marco:
I think...
Marco:
We're all listening right now because we want to try it out because it's cool and new.
Marco:
I'm really curious to see if this actually is something that has any influence really whatsoever.
Marco:
Does it have any cultural presence?
Marco:
Are a lot of people listening to it in six months?
John:
A resident secret betraying Apple employee wants to emphasize that Spotify does not have a DJ.
John:
They just have what he calls a Pandora clone.
John:
So I'm not sure.
John:
My familiarity with streaming services is small, but maybe Apple is the first one to try to get...
John:
You know, actual human DJs to pick things out as opposed to algorithms and stuff like that.
John:
But yeah, all like technologically speaking, if this turns out to be a thing, it's very presumably very easy for all the other streaming companies to hire their own people to be like radio DJs.
John:
I'm sure they're out there looking for work, especially if you can pay them Apple-sized salaries or even Spotify or Pandora-sized salaries.
John:
Because I don't listen to music that way, it's hard for me to handicap the odds that...
John:
The DJs turn out to be a thing.
John:
Some other person in the chat room also said that a lot of this is, again, as usual from an American perspective, because American radio stations are crappy and maybe they're not so bad in the rest of the world.
John:
And the idea of a person gaining fame by having good taste and choosing music that other people hear and you sort of trusting them to pick good music for you and coming to have sort of a relationship with them as a DJ.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But I one thing I was wondering from earlier is I don't see I think part of the reason why I love Spotify so much is that even in the times when I want to listen to something that I own that I have in my iTunes library, I'll just go to Spotify because it's what I'm used to.
Casey:
And it's the first place I think of.
Casey:
And I'll look up that album and I'll just play it.
Casey:
And so, yes, like the old curmudgeon in me feels like I'm just renting access to to all of my music, which is true.
Casey:
But nonetheless, I can listen to anything I want within reason anytime I want to.
John:
Well, yeah, anything I want.
John:
You've said that a few times.
John:
That brings up another topic that has come up for both me and a few other people I've seen.
John:
obviously no streaming service has like all the music right sure you know that apple music doesn't have beatles uh and uh you know was it spotify didn't have taylor swift because of her streaming you know uh decision for for that you know you don't have everything everything but they have most things right but for people with weird tastes like if you're like dan morin and really like soundtracks or if you're like me and you like basically illegal mashups or video game soundtracks nobody here has weird taste in music
John:
Right, well, I mean, Phish you think is weird, but Phish is going to be on the iTunes store.
John:
Not the ones I listen to.
John:
Well, probably not the live ones, right?
John:
Right, yeah.
John:
It's kind of a problem.
John:
Yeah.
John:
But yeah, like those things, the things I'm talking about, sometimes they're real albums.
John:
Sometimes they're imports from Japan, but a lot of these things I have on CD, like they're not pirated anything.
John:
This is the official soundtrack for this game put out by the publisher of the game, and it's not going to be anywhere on their list of things.
John:
And I have...
John:
Maybe I wouldn't want, you know, someone to DJ video game music for me, just like only the best orchestral arrangements of Zelda songs.
John:
Like, I don't know, maybe that's not enough for someone to DJ a channel up or whatever, but these things aren't even for sale in the plain old 99 cents per track iTunes store, let alone available on Apple Music.
John:
So...
John:
being able to have access to sort of the world's music the only place that's still true is if you google for something with you know in url colon mp3 and then you can basically you can find every video game soundtrack you want but on apple music the percentage of my music that is available for streaming on apple music ignoring obviously like itunes
John:
match and the fact that music will upload my music like all these things it's not like i can't listen to my music i have it it will let me stream it i can already do that with itunes match for you know 25 000 songs a month or whatever the limit is or a year or whatever um but the catalog of music
John:
really relies on you having musical tastes that are at least vaguely mainstream as you start to wander into other realms i can imagine i don't know anything about this but like classical music or opera i don't know what their selection is like in that like as you just start to wander away from popular music for lack of a better term it could be that apple music's overlap with your library is
John:
small enough that when you go oh i really want to hear the blah blah blah from blah blah blah and if the blahs are a movie or a video game album music is like i don't know what you're talking about dude and if you didn't uh previously upload that through itunes match and stream it back down or part of the my music collection no you can't like say i don't have something in my collection like you know what i have no music from street fighter in my collection but right now i would like to hear like you know the most popular or famous street fighter themes street fighter had music
John:
yeah and if it's if it's not there like then the one thing that i would think album music is for like casey was saying like sometimes you just want to say a song exists i know the title i know the artist type type type two seconds later i'm listening to it that's amazing how it works when it doesn't it shakes my faith in in the utility of this service for me in any way because i don't want to listen to things that are dj'd i don't want to listen to random streaming things i basically just want to listen to my music the one utility you could have is
John:
If there's just some song I think of that I haven't heard in years that I want to hear right now, just type it in and it's there.
John:
And if that works for me, even only 80% of the time, that makes me think, you know, definitely not $7 a month or whatever they're charging.
Marco:
In general, you know, you're right.
Marco:
It's worth pointing out that, like, you know, if you have non-mainstream tastes like this, that these services are probably not going to help you discover a lot of new music in those areas.
Marco:
And that's worth considering.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
For other roles, for the music that it does have, the fact that Apple's service is integrated with this uploads feature that they have, whether it's iTunes Match or whatever they're calling the new thing that's in music that basically does the same thing, the fact that this is all integrated, that I think gives them a huge leg up on the other services.
Marco:
For me, it was always useless for me to try the services because I would want to listen to normal people music sometimes and my crazy fish live shows at other times and I'd have to keep bouncing between two different apps and I'm a picky jerk and that would drive me crazy.
Marco:
Whereas Apple stuff...
Marco:
they basically built a streaming service into the app I was already stubbornly using for all my music listening.
Marco:
So that to me, and because it integrates all of my stuff with their stuff, that is very compelling.
Marco:
And I think, again, this is not going to be a mainstream need.
Marco:
I bet the majority of users of Apple Music are never going to use these upload features.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
For the people who will use them, this sets Apple Music apart from every other service.
John:
I guess what I'm getting at with the catalog selection is that one of the advantages, one of the supposed and real, I think advantages of, you know, so the internet age is not only can we make like the world's music available to you at your fingertips, but yeah, we can add the video game crap.
John:
We can add like, I mean, rights issues aside, but like, again, the video game is the easiest because these are actual real press CDs officially from the companies that make the games.
John:
This is not illegal stuff or live recordings or anything of, you know, dubious origin.
John:
Um,
John:
you don't have room for that in the record store there's no shelf space blah blah but there is no shelf space on the internet there's no shelf space in apple store in the cloud or whatever like you know chase down that long tail put all that crap in there like why not like like that should be one of the advantages of this type of service is that you can have a longer not an infinite tail but a longer tail than you could have when you had to put things uh when you had to you know put things on shelves in stores because then you really had to make some hard choices and
John:
you have more runway that should be it.
John:
Like I said, it certainly is the dream of just Googling.
John:
You can find any music anywhere.
John:
These streaming services, one of the advantages they should have among their many is now finally the tail can be longer.
John:
And I think it is.
John:
I think that obviously the iTunes music store has more music in it than any record, physical record store that probably ever existed.
John:
But I'm saying, you know, keep chasing that down.
John:
Don't be content with what you have.
John:
Go full fledged on, you know, just start with like categories, movie soundtracks, video game soundtracks, like,
John:
That's all official music that you can probably get from somebody.
John:
And if something's not there because only five people are interested in it, just, you know, I think that is an advantage that they should leverage.
John:
The size of their catalog should be a bragging right and not just, you know, 800 versions of the most popular top 10 songs from every year.
John:
But chase down the long tail a little bit more.
Marco:
Well, and again, I think that's also an area where Apple has an advantage.
Marco:
That even though they have not done so well in streaming in the last few years, and they've fallen behind in their relevance in music in the last few years as a result, despite that, I think they are not only... Not only do they have the right legacy, the right resources, and the right connections, but also now they have what appears to be what's probably going to be a very popular and successful music service for streaming now.
Marco:
I think Apple has the best chances of any of the players in this game of getting really good deals.
Marco:
Like, if the Beatles were ever going to be streamed anywhere, it's probably going to be Apple Music.
Marco:
Stuff like that.
Marco:
Apple is really good at getting deals, generally speaking, for this kind of stuff.
Marco:
And they're going to really sit on everybody who they can't get until they can get them.
Marco:
And maybe that extends also to the long tail.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But I think if anybody has a chance, it's Apple.
Marco:
And if you are a long tail rights holder for something, and you are trying to see which of these services do you want to submit your stuff to or get your stuff on...
Marco:
Again, I think Apple is going to have a pretty strong presence there.
Marco:
I mean, they aren't the biggest streaming service right now, but in a few years, they might be.
Marco:
And they're certainly always going to be a sizable one that people will think about when they're trying to figure out as publishers or as indies, where do I put my stuff.
Marco:
so again i i'm pretty optimistic about apple music i think if anything and i've seen only great things about it so far uh on on twitter and stuff if anything this all just highlights how clunky the presentation was because it seems like it looks like it's a really good service and people really like it and it has a lot of things that other services don't have uh it's a shame that none of that came through really in the presentation but it doesn't really matter now
John:
You don't think I think that the presentation and the actual like we talked about with the iTunes app and the music app, I think there is a there are similar levels of confusion about them because it is a very complicated thing that's difficult to explain that there shouldn't be this many like fact articles and.
John:
you know explainers about like what is apple music and what does it really give you and what do you get and what do you get when you pay for it and how does it interact with itunes match and what does it do with your files like the confusion of like well when if you just have apple music and it matches your track it downloads the drm version but if your itunes match downloads a non-drm version that but then if you enable itunes match while you still have apple music enabled you can match against the things and get the non-drm one and then not subscribe from like it is actually pretty darn complicated like i think what you're saying is the benefits are there like
John:
They didn't do a good job of explaining what the benefits are, but I think the product offering and the touch points of like, how do I use Apple Music?
John:
How do I use it on my Mac?
John:
How do I use it on my iOS device?
John:
What do I get when I pay my money?
John:
How can I access the things that I got?
John:
That is just as muddled as the presentation.
John:
Underneath it all, once you start figuring out where everything is, the actual benefits of, oh, now I can listen to music that I like or discover new music.
John:
That seems to be good, but I think...
John:
Like I said, it is not the clean sheet approach that photos took conceptually or software-wise.
John:
And that, I think, is actually a reflection of their poorly explained, at that time, not finalized deal for all their music with all their products.
John:
So I think there's work to do there.
John:
And that may...
John:
I think it will slow adoption.
John:
It doesn't doom Apple Music to a ping-like death.
John:
Basically, you could say pretty much anything that Apple does with music, just because it's Apple doing it, has a very high chance of succeeding.
John:
Ping is the counterexample because that wasn't really about music, but a music streaming service is a thing.
John:
Apple is not the inventor of that thing.
John:
They are late to the game.
John:
Because it is a thing, any streaming service that Apple does, they have to try pretty hard not to end up being a major player a couple of years down the road.
John:
So the complexity of this product offering and the weirdness of the presentation and the difficulty of really understanding what you're getting, I think will only potentially slow adoption.
John:
But in the end, streaming services are the thing that people want.
John:
And Apple has one.
John:
And if you actually find your way to start using it, it seems like people think it's pretty cool.
John:
So I would project reasonable success for this thing over the next few years, unless Apple really drops the ball somehow.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Cards Against Humanity, Harry's, and Casper.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-G Marco Arment S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It's accidental Accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Accidental Tech Podcast So long
John:
you guys want to talk about this uh whole safari considered harmful thing oh poor casey he's so sick and wants to go to bed i know and we got to talk about safari well i mean we we don't we can save it for next week but i feel like i think we should save i think we should save it for next week because i have a lot of things to say about it i don't want to talk to poor casey about oh no i thought it was going to be quick and i was more than happy to entertain it if it was going to be quick no i don't think it's gonna i don't think it's gonna be quick because i have a lot of things to say about it
John:
yeah me too man standards people are the worst non-standard people is what i want wow left-handed people that means i guess right i don't know lefty slam the one marginalized group you're still allowed to slam in america
Marco:
hey so i was in florida last week and holy crap is it hot there so you went to florida in july in june in late late late june what what did possess you to go to florida in late june i'm gonna be going in the summer too it's gonna be just as bad
Casey:
Yeah, so a good friend of mine was getting married, and so we decided to go down the week prior, well, like the beginning of the week that he got married.
Casey:
And we went and visited family and then spent two days in Disney World with Declan, which was less of a disaster than I thought it would be, and then did the wedding thing.
Casey:
But holy hell.
Casey:
You know, on paper, I think it was approximately the same temperature, although the humidity in Florida is about 11 billion percent.
Casey:
And I don't know if it's just a mental thing because it's not my weather, and so I am less tolerant of it.
Casey:
But one way or another, God, was it hot.
Casey:
I would be outside for literally 45 seconds and I'd start to sweat.
Marco:
Now, is it possible, I don't know scientifically, but is it possible to have a supersaturation of humidity where you can actually exceed 100% in Florida?
John:
When dust goes into the air, you get like a nucleation site and just water drops out of the air onto the ground?
John:
That's called rain.
John:
You are literally in a cloud.
John:
I guess that's fog.
Marco:
I guess these all have things already.
Marco:
Let's learn about the dew point, kids.
Marco:
So how was traveling with Declan?
Casey:
It was fine.
Casey:
The plane was fine.
Casey:
Traveling with an infant requires you to travel with a bunch of crap.
Casey:
We counted, I believe it was nine different items we were lugging through the airport.
Casey:
There was the stroller, the car seat, the breast pump, the diaper bag, Aaron's backpack, my travel bag, two suitcases.
Casey:
Crap.
Casey:
There's one other thing.
Casey:
Oh, a portable pack and play.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
John:
Yeah.
John:
This is a large set of objects.
John:
So how many things did you actually carry onto the plane with you?
John:
Because you checked the bags and stuff.
John:
So you're bringing onto the plane.
Casey:
No, I checked one bag.
John:
So you're bringing onto the plane the car seat, the baby, the stroller, the pack and play.
John:
Gate check the stroller.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
correct we gate checked the stroller and the car seat he was and the car seat oh well so you didn't get the the lovely experience of having to install car seats while everyone else in the plane stares at the back of your head with daggers correct yeah so because what is the deal is it is it required not if he's under two only if you love your children oh that's cold no they say for like for babies of a certain size that i think they have them on your lap
Casey:
Under two, I believe it is.
Casey:
Maybe that's wrong, but he was considered a lap infant.
Casey:
He still had a boarding pass, which isn't entirely surprising, but I was a little bit surprised by, but the boarding pass had no seat on it.
Casey:
It just said like inf or something.
Marco:
Was he allowed to keep it in his pocket when he went through the scanner?
Casey:
Well, we actually, this was my first time using PreCheck, and PreCheck was pretty cool.
Casey:
Does he have PreCheck?
Casey:
Yes, because he rides on our PreCheck.
Casey:
He does not, however, have his own global entry, so we need to file for that shortly.
Marco:
So when he's too old to be a lap infant in like two years or a year or whatever, can you and Aaron go through PreCheck?
Casey:
Yes, he gets it until he's like 18, I think, or something like that, or quite a bit older age.
Casey:
That he is right now.
Marco:
Okay, that's good.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So, man, the car seats, we have not flown with Adam yet.
Marco:
And one of the reasons why is that I heard on various, I believe it was your daily Lex's forever ago, Lex's accounts of traveling with kids in car seats on planes.
Marco:
And it just sounds awful.
John:
Oh, it's lots of fun.
John:
I think at one point we did two.
John:
Two kids, two car seats.
John:
Maybe we never did two.
John:
My wife will probably correct me.
John:
But anyway, the struggle of... Like, car seat is big, it's heavy, whatever.
John:
Like, the real problem is getting it installed...
John:
in the seat with the airplane buckles and then getting it out again i can't the tip i'll give you i haven't listened to the episodes of uh of turning this car around or that you're referencing i'm assuming for likes but you know when they show the little demo of like lift the flap and the little thing goes into you know the car you know how the how seat belts work on planes right yeah all right you don't really pay much attention to that because you're like whatever i'm gonna put it on my app i'm gonna click it in when i want to get out i'm gonna lift the buckle
John:
when you're bringing the car seat on the plane like i guess some people probably don't even buckle it in at all they just put it on the seat put the baby in it and that's done which doesn't make much sense to me because then it's just your entire baby and the car seat hurtling up to the ceiling and turbulence and smashing it right so you really should be buckling the car seat in and you want to do this quickly because everyone is behind you you know wanting to get through and you've got your whole family blocking the aisle and all the crap everywhere especially if you have two seats and the kids are screaming and everything right
John:
so you you try to buckle the the seat in by taking the seat fishing it through whatever stupid thing you're fishing it through you know behind underneath the seat clicking it in yanking the thing to tighten it good put the baby and you're done you think like well we did it right
John:
When it comes time to unbuckle that, especially if you're a crazy parent who pulls it really tight because you want to get the seat really tight because you've been trained by the people at the fire department who told you how to put your car seat into your car, you pull it really tight.
John:
When it's time to get off the plane and you're patiently waiting and everything and you're like, well, I don't want to disconnect this seat until we're ready to go, but someone's got to pick up the infant and then I got to take out the seat and whatever.
John:
You go there and you realize...
John:
I can't lift the flap because the flap is hard against the back of the plastic seat that I just tightened down as tight as I possibly could.
John:
How do I get this thing unbuckled?
John:
And now you're like trapped.
John:
Again, the kids are screaming.
John:
Everyone is upset.
John:
You just want to get off this plane and you can't lift the flap because it's facing.
John:
So I'm going to tell you.
John:
Face the flap away from the seat when you tighten it.
John:
It's not probably the natural way you're going to do it because if you think of how it is over your lap, the flap is face.
John:
It would be facing the back of the seat.
John:
Face the flap the other way.
John:
Otherwise, you will be super sad.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
John:
So out of curiosity, how was that resolved?
John:
That was resolved with anger and muscles.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
because if you can imagine you can pull the belt away from the seat and then like pull it away as hard as you can to try to make a gap and then shove your hand in there to push but you got to lift the flap up it's not coming off unless that flap goes up so you basically have to as hard as you tightened it i hope you didn't tighten it as hard as you could because you have to have a little bit more leverage to like
John:
pull the strap away from the back of the seat and push that little lever up just enough the thing releases and you know goes shooting out the side of the seat probably puts a hole in the side of the plane as it springs out and then you release the seat and in my case put it into a giant bag that goes on your back like the like the old woman from labyrinth the movie that neither one of you has seen probably with david bowie that one
John:
Yeah, remember the junk lady?
John:
She's got a million things on her back.
John:
She starts putting on Jennifer Connelly's back, too, so she'll become one of those hunched ladies.
John:
Well, anyway, when you have a car seat on your back and a rolling thing and a kid and all the other crap, you feel like that lady.
John:
But yeah, we did eventually get the seat off the plane, and I've done several airplane flights with car seats, and at no point was it easy, but a few tips and a little bit of experience can make it easier.
John:
Also, don't bring the baby because they scream all the time.