Lasers and Pew-Pew and Space Aliens
Marco:
I made the mistake of going to the grocery store today.
Marco:
I figured, you know, if I go, yes, it's Thanksgiving week, but if I go on Monday at noon, no one else is going to be there yet.
Marco:
It's way too early and it's the middle of the day.
John:
People take off the whole week, I think.
John:
I didn't understand where everybody was when I went to work today.
John:
It was a little traffic.
John:
There wasn't a lot of people in the parking lot.
John:
Yeah, don't go to any food, any places that sell food or beverages this week.
Marco:
All of the traffic was in my grocery store's parking lot.
Yeah.
Casey:
apparently everybody else in the world had the same idea that i did no one's going to be there on monday at noon i didn't i didn't realize you live in a retirement community oh man i feel like we need something fun and clever to start the show with maybe we can do a little bit of follow-out john's favorite topic um the internet has given us a gift today and by the internet i mean david galetly i'm so sorry that i probably pronounced that wrong
Casey:
but uh david has given us the john syracusa paper doll kit which this is really a call out to reconcilable differences which yeah this is this is a different podcast you guys confused about what podcast we're doing no no this is what follow-up is john keep up for take notes
Marco:
John, are you acknowledging that follow-out has a solid meaning and you are arguing over what it is?
John:
I don't know what follow-out means.
John:
All I know is that this is a topic for a different podcast.
John:
We'll probably talk about it on that other podcast.
John:
It's like when you say airing on another network.
John:
We can't even name the other podcast, but it's reconcile the differences and you should listen to it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
All right.
John:
Go ahead.
John:
Fine.
John:
If you want to do paper dolls, fine.
Casey:
I just wanted to call everyone's attention to this absolutely phenomenal tweet from David with the John Syracuse of paper doll.
Casey:
Your nose was a little Rudolph-y for my taste.
John:
That's a style.
John:
That's not a reflection on my actual nose.
Yeah.
John:
i didn't even notice the long island 1992 shirt that's delightful yeah i don't think it would better if he knew what the running shirts look like i should put a picture of him but he's got the hypercritical shirt in there i was thinking of printing this out for my kids to uh play with oh my god they would lose it also i should have the atp shirt edition obviously can we get this printed on like a sheet of magnet things so that you could actually move them around like magnets is that it's like is there a company that does that i'm sure there is
John:
oh god that's amazing he's done some other pictures uh of me as well i think one where uh merlin's riding on my back you know that one oh yeah yeah yeah it's the layers are in folders accessories torso pants footwear so you can oh this is this is actually you don't even need the magnet you can actually toggle everything right from here as long as you're willing to launch photoshop that's what people have been doing when they compose the different versions of me
John:
that's so fantastic we'll put a link to the uh we shouldn't put a link to the tweet we'll put a link to the website where you can see all the other stuff this really is incredible so you guys we all did a very terrible job explaining why this exists oh yeah that's true all right well anyway on reconcilable differences which is a podcast i do with merlin man we talked about clothing at one point and this was merlin's idea that someone should make a paper doll version of me to help dress me because he got it into his head that uh that he wants to do a
John:
not a makeover like that you know those sort of queer eye type shows where there's someone who doesn't have any fashion sense and then other people with fashion sense want to fix him that's what merlin wants to do to me or wants other people to do to me so here you go paper dolls tattoos wait what there's a tattoos layer i hope there's a question mark after it in the layer too because answer is none
Casey:
Except that one that nobody talks about.
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
None.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
I don't really get tattoos, personally.
Casey:
I've never, ever, ever, ever desired to have a tattoo on me.
Casey:
You know, that means that you're going to have one in six months.
Casey:
Yeah, that's true, actually, knowing my history.
Casey:
That's exactly true.
Casey:
Oh, God, no.
Casey:
Goodness.
Casey:
No, I just... Anything I would want... Anything I would like enough to put on my body...
Marco:
like a it would probably be like some sort of consumer bs but b inevitably i would end up hating it so oh god i just can't imagine so i love so i have i have configured now the rugby shirt dad jeans asics shoes uh and the and the john glasses but the bow tie it's a fantastic combination here bow ties are cool and you would get that reference if you watch more tv
John:
Yeah, I got nothing.
John:
Neither one of you.
John:
Neither one.
John:
What was it?
John:
Top four TV shows my butt.
Casey:
Which, speaking of, I think I've gotten to the point that I hate listening to top four.
Casey:
Because so much of what you guys say, I've never listened to a podcast.
Casey:
It makes me want to yell at it more.
John:
I think it's working as designed, as far as I can tell.
Casey:
No, I think you're right.
Casey:
I absolutely think you're right.
Casey:
And the thing is, like, I genuinely do enjoy the show.
Casey:
And there are times like I tweeted at both of you earlier today.
Casey:
I genuinely thought that the way you handled the pizza discussion was perfect, because without question, it is so much easier to find good pizza in New York or the surrounding area than it is anywhere else in the country.
Casey:
Don't say it.
John:
Don't say it.
Casey:
But.
Casey:
there's good pizza to be had in other places.
John:
Which I did say.
John:
Which you said.
John:
I haven't listened to this episode yet, but I assume I will hate it.
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
I thought, Marco, you guys both handled it perfectly.
Casey:
I really did.
Casey:
Oh, this is perfect.
Casey:
That's why you just faced it.
Casey:
Isn't it great?
Casey:
Oh, God, this is magnificent.
Marco:
it's it's just like the standard john plus a bow tie plus a bow tie i don't think the bow tie fits with the rugby shirt i don't think that's it doesn't that doesn't fit i think you should try this one day maybe next year wbc something like that i showed this to my wife and she said why do you look so angry
John:
I said I'm probably angry about either being half naked or about other people dressing me.
John:
Yeah, I couldn't imagine you'd be incredibly happy about either of those states.
John:
Yeah, so I think it's the appropriate expression.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
But anyway, I was very happy with how you handled that.
Casey:
The thing of it is, I think part of the reason I was so perturbed at top four today is because I don't like Indian food with the exception of naan, which is delightful.
Casey:
But the thing of it is, it very, very well could be that I've just made terrible choices whenever I've gone for Indian food.
Casey:
I don't even know what I've eaten, but I can tell you I've not liked any of it.
Casey:
And so I was very perturbed that Indian ranked so high in your list.
Casey:
However, I concur with Pizza.
Casey:
I concur with Panera and Deli's.
Casey:
I think you were a little harsh on Quiznos and Subway, but I can get past that.
Casey:
Ugh.
Marco:
No, I mean, if you're in a place where the best options you have are Quiznos or Subway, just go to the grocery store and buy cold cuts and make your own sandwich at home.
Marco:
It's better than that.
Marco:
Honestly, when I did live in those places, that's what I did because it was better.
Casey:
For the most part, I did agree with most of what you guys said.
Marco:
And you can't forgive the Subway triangle cheese tessellation issue.
Casey:
Yes, you are spot on on that.
Casey:
I completely agree.
John:
To give context for this, this is top four, the podcast that Marco does with Tiff, his wife, and they supposedly rank the top four whatever.
John:
So top four takeout restaurants, top four Halloween candies.
John:
What they actually do on the show is...
John:
It's only vaguely related to that, and they're now lately both having trouble coming up with top four or anything.
John:
And most of their opinions are terribly wrong.
John:
Anyway, that's why you listen to the show, because it is both entertaining and infuriating.
John:
And it's short, so there you go.
John:
Have we concluded the advertised other podcast sections of this podcast yet?
Casey:
Yes, you know, you should complain about the fact that I have brought up the two podcasts that my co-hosts have done, and I have not brought up any of my extracurriculars.
Casey:
But yes, you continue to be upset, John.
John:
Well, that's just your personality, Casey.
John:
You didn't even mention Robot or not.
John:
Well, now we have.
John:
Are you satisfied?
Casey:
Would you like me to bring up The Incomparable?
John:
You were on The Incomparable.
John:
It's practically your show now.
John:
Oh, God!
Casey:
i hate you so much right now john one episode only i understood that reference all right so now that you've ruined follow out for me just as you had planned um can we do some uh follow up and talk about what ben wrote in and said i thought you would never ask
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Just outsource it to Squarespace and be done with it.
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John:
all right so john tell us in this uh follow-up section what ben g wrote in and said uh we were talking about the ipad pro screen and how it wasn't quite as good in terms of color accuracy as a surface pro 4 and also not as good as actually some of the earlier ipad screens apple had made or the smaller ones anyway um and i wondered uh i said it was kind of a shame that it didn't have the new uh sort of uh wide spectrum or whatever the correct term is it uh uh
John:
large gamut anyway uh display that the iMac does that the the p3 specification which is supposedly bigger than sRGB and Ben wrote in to tell us that one of the reasons the iPad Pro can't do that is because it requires an RGB backlight so uh these screens that we call LCDs but sometimes also LEDs the LED just refers to the backlight so you've got a bunch of you've got this semi-transparent thing in front with little colored sections that you can turn on and off in different amounts and behind it
John:
Behind most screens, you just have a big white light that's just on all the time over the entire screen for computer screens anyway.
John:
And apparently the iMac has instead of a big white light behind it, an RGB backlight.
John:
So it's a backlight that can be different colors instead of just white.
John:
And I didn't know that.
John:
I know televisions do that and televisions do all sorts of weird tricks with the backlight to try to make the image look better.
John:
But it makes sense that if the iMac has an RGB backlight, perhaps they can't get that small enough or low power enough to be in a iPad Pro just yet.
John:
We have to wait a couple more years, I guess.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Well, I did not know that.
Casey:
I really didn't have any idea that it was an RGB backlight.
Casey:
That's very cool.
Casey:
Tell me about iMac Insomnia.
John:
yeah my new my wife's new uh 27 inch retina imac uh i was saying last week uh that it seems to have insomnia put it to sleep and then we'll wake up again or we'll just walk away from the computer after using it and then come back an hour later and it's still awake and i wasn't quite able to figure out why uh lots of listeners sent in suggestions uh one common one was the uh the ir receiver if it's in the line of sight of
John:
something that sprays ir like a remote control or one of those ir blaster things or whatever it's conceivable that the ir receiver on the mac which i guess it has one i don't i don't even know that it had one and i didn't even check if it did have one but the theory is that for our computers that do have an ir receiver if it's uh near your television or something like that you could keep it awake just with ir input um i don't know if that theory is correct because i my thing is definitely not in the line of sight of any ir and i don't even know if my thing has ir receiver
John:
Probably does, but who knows.
John:
Anyway, the next guess was Bluetooth.
John:
If you go to the Bluetooth preference pane, this is annoying that this is an inside energy saver, but it's not.
John:
You've got to go to the Bluetooth preference pane.
John:
Then you have to click on Advanced.
John:
Then there's a checkbox that says, allow Bluetooth devices to wake this computer.
John:
And that was checked by default.
John:
So I unchecked it.
John:
And I think my problems are solved because I've got the reason that feature exists is if you have like the new iMac, if you get it with the recommended Apple crappy cripples Bluetooth keyboard and the recommended Bluetooth mouse, then you don't have your mouse or your keyboard connected with a wire to your computer.
John:
So when your computer goes to sleep, if you don't have the setting checked and you hit the space bar, like to wake up your computer or wiggle the mouse or click the mouse button or something, the computer won't actually wake up.
John:
I don't have that problem because we've got a wired keyboard attached to it and actually a USB mouse that's wireless to the keyboard anyway.
John:
So I unchecked that thing.
John:
And so far, so good.
John:
The computer has not had insomnia.
John:
It hasn't woken up spontaneously.
John:
And when it goes to sleep, it stays asleep.
John:
So I'm pretty well convinced that I've solved my problem.
Casey:
Excellent.
Casey:
I wouldn't have guessed it was Bluetooth acting up, but I'm glad you figured that out.
Casey:
I also don't understand how you could have wires on your desktop, but, you know, teach their own.
John:
It's a keyboard tray, so the wires go underneath.
John:
Oh, a keyboard tray.
John:
Yeah, you've got to have the keyboard at the right height, you know?
John:
Put the desk at the right height.
John:
Well, then the desk feels too low, and then you need something to prop the computer up.
John:
Yeah, that's easier than managing a keyboard tray.
John:
I think the main reason my wife likes the keyboard tray is that it gives her more room to put junk on the desk.
John:
Because the keyboard tray is underneath.
John:
The entire surface of the desk in front of you is free for just having papers and stuff.
John:
Sometimes it's good because you're referring to them.
John:
Other times you're just piling stuff.
John:
But it really is convenient.
John:
I think I would...
John:
Even if I didn't need it for ergonomic positioning, even if I had like a desk that went up and down and I can get it the right.
John:
In fact, I had that at work.
John:
My desk at work is somewhat adjustable.
John:
And I tried putting it down at the level that it should be for the keyboard.
John:
And I just like the desk higher and to have the little tray underneath it.
John:
It's just what I'm used to.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Any other follow up?
Casey:
That was another quick round of follow up.
Casey:
I'm very proud of us.
John:
Well, this is a short period of time after the last episode, I'm sure.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And also it's slow for the holidays.
John:
I feel like we need to have like a laid back holiday episode.
Casey:
I should have poured a drink.
Casey:
I didn't realize that was the plan.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So speaking of holidays, John, you came up with an idea for this episode.
John:
Yeah, because we're recording this on a Monday, only a few days after we recorded the last episode, because we're all off for our holidays, our Thanksgiving holiday vacations and travels and so on.
John:
I thought, what better way to celebrate Thanksgiving, which is a holiday here in the U.S.
John:
People outside the U.S.
John:
can look it up.
John:
It's pretty dumb as far as holidays go.
John:
But anyway, it is a holiday and we get off work.
Casey:
Slow down.
Casey:
You're going to have to explain yourself on that one.
John:
It's one of those holidays that really doesn't really make much sense.
John:
It's not really that historically significant.
John:
It's only because the people involved in it were the important enough people to celebrate something.
John:
It's like they're celebrating.
John:
Anyway, you can read the story of Thanksgiving, but bottom line is Europeans came to this country and slaughtered all the indigenous people and took all their land.
John:
uh and now that we're supposed to feel guilty for it and stuff but having a holiday kind of celebrating how nice it was that we all cooperated is like weird it's like yeah and then and then we live together happily ever after right no we don't follow there anyway it's it's it's not as bad as columbus day but it's close um but we don't care because it's just the holiday season and we have turkey and gather around with family and
John:
argue about politics or however your thanksgiving is going to go i don't i don't want to make this into a downer bottom line is we get off work let's concentrate on what's important here all right but only for thursday you have to take a vacation day for friday or just you know be retired like some of us are well even marco has to visit family on thanksgiving thanksgiving uh i would i would rather work for the rest of the year full time than deal with thanksgiving family drama
John:
untrue you don't know my family well i don't know i i think you underestimate what it would be like to work for the rest of the year waking up and getting into an office and commuting through traffic at nine o'clock every day i'm not going to get in the middle of this anyway i don't want to make this into a downer the whole point is is thanksgiving which like i said even though it's a stupid holiday it is a holiday um and one of the good things about thanksgiving is a time of year when in theory you are supposed to reflect on what you are thankful for
John:
That is usually the part of the evening before people get drunk and angry and start arguing about politics.
John:
Sometimes you go around the table and say what you're thankful for or whatever.
John:
Whoever is the most willing and able to induce embarrassment in your extended family usually makes this happen.
John:
um so i guess i'm filling that role here on the podcast and decided to ask the assembled get a get a group of hosts what 2015 ish tech things are we most thankful for they don't have to be this year they could be like a three or four year old tech that you just discovered this year i don't know the year framing is loose but anyway what kind of things are we thankful for i figure we'll just go around in circles until we're all exhausted and don't have anything left to be thankful for i hope you have more than one thing
John:
Oh, great.
John:
I have a whole list.
John:
Really?
John:
Is it four?
John:
I really was trying not to invoke the ghost to top four by making Marco have a list.
John:
I was like, well, I'm not the most thankful for this, but it's probably around number five.
John:
I actually have five.
John:
Are they all number five?
John:
No, there's a very clear number one.
John:
All right.
John:
All right.
John:
Marco seems like he's ready to go first.
Casey:
So go ahead.
Casey:
Yeah, I did not do my homework on this.
Casey:
I thought about it for like 10 minutes about half an hour ago.
Casey:
Goodness.
Casey:
If Marco's doing more homework than I am, something is seriously broken.
Casey:
I gave you like three days notice.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I just kind of forgot.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Go ahead, Marco.
Marco:
Well, my clear number one.
Marco:
I thought of it immediately when you said this, and there is no contest.
Marco:
MDNS responder.
Yeah.
Marco:
Suction number one.
Marco:
So if anybody doesn't get the joke, this is the old version of DiscoveryD, which is the system daemon that's responsible on Macs and iOS devices for network name lookup, finding Bonjour devices, etc., or whatever Bonjour is called.
Marco:
Oh, no, that's the new name.
Marco:
It used to be called Rendezvous, right?
Marco:
Mm-hmm.
Marco:
Anyway, so it's very much responsible for Macs and Apple devices finding other servers and devices on the network and coordinating things with them.
Marco:
So for things like file sharing, probably involved in things like AirDrop, definitely network shares, Apple TV kind of stuff, AirPlay.
Marco:
And Discovery D was the new version of this, the rewrite of this.
Marco:
It shipped with Yosemite and with iOS 8.
Marco:
It was so buggy, and it caused so many problems for so many people.
Marco:
You know, if during the era of Yosemite and iOS 8, if you ever had things like other Macs on your network disappear and just not be visible in Finder for browsing or for sharing, or if you had things like you'd have the computer name with a number after it, like, you know...
Marco:
TIFF's computer, seven.
Marco:
And it's like, what?
Marco:
Or some crazy number like that.
Marco:
So that was the kind of problem you'd see with this, but it caused so many other problems that some people just got lucky, like the HDMI CEC unicorns, and just never hit it.
Marco:
I hit all of these problems, so...
Marco:
You'd have problems like, you know, certain like network printers that had bonjour interfaces would frequently fail and just never be connectable anymore.
Marco:
AirPlay would fail constantly.
Marco:
AirDrop would fail constantly.
Marco:
So many problems with various network and inter-Mac, inter-iOS communication things.
Marco:
And this was honestly, this was a major driver behind my well-circulated piece, Apple Has Lost the Functional High Ground, from last winter.
Marco:
Because it shipped with Yosemite and iOS 8 in the fall of 2014.
Marco:
And it took until, what, summertime?
Marco:
something like that, before they issued an update that reverted it back to the old... They reverted DiscoveryD back to the old one MDNS responder, which just fixed all the problems.
Marco:
And so it was a good six months, something like that, of using this.
Marco:
And the number of problems I encountered for those six months...
Marco:
just made me question everything about Apple.
Marco:
Just like, how could they possibly have let this go for so long?
Marco:
How could they have shipped this?
Marco:
And it was making all the stuff that makes Apple devices usually really pleasant.
Marco:
Like, so much of it was crumbling or was at least unreliable for me.
Marco:
And when they went back to MDNS Responder, a massive amount of these problems just disappeared immediately for me.
Marco:
And so now I can do things like browse the iTunes share from the Apple TV and watch movies that are on my home server on the Apple TV and just stuff like that.
Marco:
I can reliably connect to the Mac Mini that serves this live stream.
Marco:
I can reliably connect to TIFF's computer and share files.
Marco:
I can print and it works every time.
Marco:
This is stuff that used to work very reliably, didn't for like six months, and now does again.
Marco:
So number one by far for me is the return of MDNS Responder.
John:
I like that the number one thing you're thankful for is really just a sly way to complain about something.
Marco:
No, because honestly, I wrote an update article once I was pretty sure that this had fixed everything.
Marco:
And I really want to be clear that, yeah, it was really bad before.
Marco:
And also, I'm really happy now because now they have fixed that massive class of problems.
Marco:
And Apple stuff has all sorts of other problems still.
Marco:
And I'm sure we will spare no moment talking about those.
Marco:
But that really did fix a ton of them that I was having.
Marco:
And it says a lot about Apple that they were...
Marco:
That was a big mistake to ship that and to stick with it for so long.
Marco:
But it does say a lot about Apple that rather than just double down on that and just try to crank through and figure out all the problems, they said, no, we'll just go back.
Marco:
I don't think they've really done that very often.
Marco:
And I can't even imagine what had to go on inside the company to convince whoever needed to be convinced to roll back, to just abandon this whole rewrite of this thing and just roll back to their previous version.
Marco:
But I'm really glad they did because it really did fix a massive number of problems that I was having.
John:
Yeah.
John:
um and eventually it got to the point where i guess it was stable but they're probably motivated to replace it because it was old and crusty and never really worked right and they had rung out most of the bugs but it was still probably like not easy to change or add features to for like you know handoff or whatever the hell i don't even know if that was uh
John:
what what their motivation for discovery was but as i said every time they've gone and replaced some part of the system with some newer thing that's something you have to do periodically you just got to not screw it up like i the the idea behind the effort was good the execution was bad so i really hope that if not discovery d that something else comes back because it's not like they're replacing these things for the health there was motivation behind it it's just they just botched the execution
Casey:
And we'll also put a link in the show notes to a friend of the show, Craig Hockenberry, who talked about this.
Casey:
It's a little bit strong on the language because Craig was a little perturbed, but it's a really good write-up as to what went wrong with Discovery D and why.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Shall I go next, John, or would you prefer to go next?
John:
No, you're up, Casey.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Because I didn't have a lot of time, or didn't spend a lot of time thinking about this, my selection is— You had my entire Discovery D rant.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
You know, the first thing I'm thankful for, which I'm really, really excited about, is actually live photos.
Casey:
I really, really, really enjoy live photos.
Casey:
You could make an argument that it's gimmicky, and maybe it is, and maybe in a few years I'll think it's silly.
Casey:
But sitting here now, I love live photos.
Casey:
Being able to have a little bit of context around what's happening, especially when you have a really young child in the house, is really, really awesome.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
There's been a couple of live photos that I've gotten just by pure happenstance that have been really awesome.
Casey:
Like once I took a picture of Declan when we were out to eat and he decided to make this like just mammoth yawn right as I take in the picture.
Casey:
So you can see this like huge yawn as he's eating at this restaurant.
Casey:
And it
Casey:
it sounds silly describing it, but it was just the funniest live photo.
Casey:
And I don't know that, um, I, I don't know that I would have captured that moment had it not been for the fact that what I thought was a picture was actually a very, very short movie.
Casey:
And so I love live photos.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
The only thing I don't like about live photos is now it makes me question whether or not I want to use my big semi-fancy camera or my iPhone to take pictures.
Casey:
And generally speaking, I do reach for the big camera, but it doesn't make me feel guilty anymore if I don't have the big camera handy when I'm trying to capture a shot because I love having that context.
John:
Do you have burst mode on your big fancy camera?
Casey:
I do.
Casey:
I never, ever, ever use it, though.
John:
Blast away and make your own live pictures.
Casey:
Maybe that's one way of looking at it, but I very rarely shoot in burst mode.
Casey:
The handful of times I've done it, it has come out pretty well, but then I'd have to post-process it, turn it into a movie, and blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
Not to say that this is egregious, but it's pretty magical just whipping out the phone that's in your pocket and snapping a picture and having that little bit of context behind it.
Casey:
I just really, really love it.
Marco:
Kind of in that vein, I'd like to... This is not on my list.
Marco:
Sorry, John.
John:
This is par for the course.
John:
Go ahead.
John:
Yes, that's exactly right.
Marco:
I'd like to add to that just how incredibly good the video is from the iPhone 6S and 6S Plus.
Marco:
This year, I finally, after seven years, upgraded my main good camera from a Canon 5D Mark II to the Sony a7R II.
Marco:
And it's a fantastic camera in every way.
Marco:
And I love this thing.
Marco:
I love the pictures I get out of the Sony.
Marco:
It's incredible.
Marco:
It is incredibly expensive, too.
Marco:
So it's not for everybody.
Marco:
But when you buy a camera every seven years, it can be justifiable somehow.
Marco:
But anyway, love this camera.
Marco:
And it shoots 4K video.
Marco:
And it's one of the relatively few cameras on the market today that shoots 4K video.
Marco:
They're getting more and more numerous, but they're still relatively few in number.
Marco:
But the iPhone 6S came out, and the 6S also shoots 4K video.
Marco:
And having shot now with both of them a reasonable amount,
Marco:
The difference between them is not that big.
Marco:
Like here's this camera that's being hailed as one of the best cameras overall ever made and one of the best cameras that can shoot 4K.
Marco:
And the camera that's in every iPhone of the current generation shoots 4K video that, to my eye as a casual observer, is almost just as good.
Marco:
the quality you can get out of this out of the iphone in 4k mode granted it isn't 60 frames a second it's only 30 i don't i haven't i don't know what shoots 4k at 60 frames a second but it's i've never seen anything that offered that um it seems like 4k everywhere these days is basically limited to 30 but if you're willing to deal with the lower frame rate it looks incredible just to have that resolution it really does look like a moving photo it just it looks like a real life photo and
Marco:
Live photos are great.
Marco:
They're great for when you didn't intend to take a video.
Marco:
But when you do intend to take a video, the quality you can get out of the iPhone camera in 4K mode is just ridiculously good.
Marco:
And for people like us who have kids and get all sentimental about how cute our kids are, it is just stunning how much this captures life in the way it looks in real life.
Marco:
And I'm very, very glad to have this because...
Marco:
Almost every parent at some point says, you know, I really wish I shot more video.
Marco:
I really wish I shot more photos.
Marco:
And I've been that way for video, certainly.
Marco:
We shoot plenty of photos, but we don't shoot enough video.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm the same way.
Casey:
I reflect and look back on the pictures and video I've taken in the last year because Declan's just over a year old now.
Casey:
And I couldn't agree more that I've taken a lot of really great pictures.
Casey:
I'm really proud of the pictures I've taken, but I haven't shot near enough video.
Casey:
And I think that part of the problem is, is that it's not often, especially early in life, like super early in life, that I can capture something that's quote unquote remarkable as it's happening.
Casey:
And I think that that's the wrong attitude to have.
Casey:
And I should be better about just capturing everyday life because it'll be interesting to look at maybe not in a year or five years, but maybe in 10 or 20 years.
Casey:
And so I'm trying to train myself to start taking video of things that seem really boring.
Casey:
And like you were saying, Marco, I really, really like that this camera that's in my pocket always is...
Casey:
takes 4k video which is kind of it's kind of an insurance policy right you know there will eventually be video that is crisper than 4k but sitting here in 2015 that's it's 4k is going to look pretty good for a while i think and and so i'm really happy that i'm getting really high resolution video out of the camera i am most likely to have on me always
Marco:
Yeah, and it really does not look like an inferior quality camera.
Marco:
When you're shooting 4K with the iPhone, it does not seem inferior quality at all.
Marco:
In fact, compared to my real camera, which granted is not a dedicated video camera, but a lot of people use these things for video, things like the audio are actually better.
Marco:
The audio is way better on the iPhone.
Marco:
The autofocus is way better on the iPhone.
Marco:
It shouldn't be.
Marco:
There's no reason why it should be.
Marco:
Hardware-wise, the Sony kicks its butt in so many ways.
Marco:
But
Marco:
The iPhone just has really nice automatic defaults and does really good audio processing such that with no effort, you get pretty great video out of the iPhone compared to this professional camera.
Marco:
It's amazing how good it is.
Marco:
So yeah, I'm very thankful for how good the 6S is at shooting video because it is making me shoot more video.
Marco:
And for parenting nostalgia purposes, that is just awesome.
John:
Don't forget to take videos of your kids screaming and crying because we have to take pictures of kids when they're smiling or happy.
John:
Take pictures of them when they're crying and take videos so they can hear the noise that they made because they won't believe you when you try to describe it.
John:
And sometimes it's nice to look back when you're far, far distant from it and say, I remember that terrible screeching that didn't leave our house for X number.
John:
Declan always looks like he's smiling.
John:
But anyway, at some point he has to be screaming and crying.
John:
Capture that.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, we try to occasionally.
Casey:
It's funny you bring that up because just before the show we were talking, when we were at my parents' this past weekend, we did like a literally five or ten minute photo shoot with them where they took a bunch of pictures of the three of us that we'll maybe use in our Christmas card this year.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
I think the pictures look good, but Declan's kind of nonplussed about the whole thing.
Casey:
And oftentimes, it's pretty easy to make him pretty happy.
Casey:
And in these, he's kind of like, whatever.
Casey:
And Aaron and I were discussing, well, that is a better representation of real life.
Casey:
Because he's usually a fairly chipper kid, but he's not always super excited about everything.
Casey:
And so we were debating and didn't really reach a conclusion before I came in to record.
Casey:
Yeah, maybe we should just use one of those and that's okay.
Casey:
And so I'm trying to do better about capturing the annoyed Declan and the upset Declan as time goes on.
Casey:
All right, John, I think it's your turn.
John:
All right, well, you might think, since I suggested this exercise, that I have some really clever, interesting things on my list, but I don't.
John:
That was your guys' job.
John:
I'm just the idea man, as they say.
John:
So my first one might be a surprise, but I don't think so, based on what I've talked about.
John:
It's kind of like Marcos is a qualified recommendation, but it is the first thing I thought of.
John:
The first tech thing I'm thankful for this year is photos, Apple's photo thing, where they finally...
John:
gave you a way to have access to all your photos everywhere and to put all your photos up in the cloud and charge you money for the storage.
John:
But the prices are not so bad.
John:
I've had a lot of weird issues with it, but I have to say all of the bugs and stuff that I've encountered so far have been delays, not roadblocks.
John:
Like it's done weird things and it's been spooky and it's been weird, but always eventually at the end of it, I come out the other side with a, as far as I'm aware, completely functioning and working library that is all synced up.
John:
and is in the cloud everywhere and is available on phones and now on my mac photos actually performs in an acceptable manner most of the time still ignores my space bar about 50 of the time when i hit it but anyway it's got a long way to go but i like the fact that this is a fairly new program that's already been updated and the update has added minor features and improved performance and i'm just so glad that apple finally has gotten their photo library
John:
up online and onto their servers and uh you know not stranded on one machine they still have a long way to go when it comes to dealing with families and multiple photo libraries but this is supposed to be a list of things i'm thankful for not complaints so photos is my number one so this really does get the john syracuse seal of approval
John:
wow well it's it's just because it's so much better than iPhoto like I and I'm and you know a lot of people who use other services like they use Google or you know Amazon's cloud storage or whatever I'm not saying this is the only solution for you in fact it's probably not even the best solution for the Mac from everything that I've heard Google's photo solution seems to be much more reliable and have more features and be really cool I just we've always had our photos in iPhoto and so photos is the obvious and only you know transition to stay in the Apple you know completely in the Apple ecosystem and
John:
iPhoto, towards the end of its life, was really terrible, but in the beginning and middle, it was pretty good, especially when our library was smaller.
John:
I'm glad that Apple has continued to develop a program that essentially did import my iPhoto library in a sane way.
John:
I had to coalesce my ratings down into favorites, but I'm okay with that.
John:
I still have plenty of complaints about it, but it was just so long for them to do the obvious thing.
John:
We all talked about EverPix and were sad when it went out of business and
John:
Now Apple's finally getting a clue and say, yeah, maybe we could upload all their pictures and make it so that they don't have to all be on the device, but you have access to them everywhere.
John:
Good idea, Apple.
Casey:
Now, I've been very trigger shy on photos.
Casey:
I'm a pretty devout user of picture life, which I really, really like.
Casey:
I've been afraid to really get into photos just because, I don't know, it always felt like I didn't want to trust Apple with this because I don't want it to go bad.
Casey:
Even though I have backups, like I have Picture Life and I have two or three copies locally, but it just scared me.
Casey:
But to hear that it pretty much has a John Syracuse seal of approval, that might change my tune.
John:
Well, but you shouldn't, though.
John:
All I would say is it's like online backup.
John:
You just have to have... Everyone should be doing this.
John:
If you have your photo library, there should be some place that you upload it to.
John:
If it's Picture Life, if it's Google Photos, if it's Apple's Photos thing, wherever it is, the whole point should be that...
John:
Worst case, you should still have online backup and you should still have local backup and you should still have local clones.
John:
But I like having like yet another thing that is actually dedicated to photos that despite all those things I just described, like using Backblaze or, you know, Time Machine or Super Duper clones, you know, you're backing up over your network to whatever.
John:
Right.
John:
on top of that to have another thing that says oh and by the way every time you take a picture with your phone it gets uploaded to this cloud thing and then it gets downloaded onto your mac and every time you import photos from an sd card onto your mac it gets uploaded into the cloud and downloaded onto your onto your phone and you don't have to have all your photos everywhere but on a particular mac you can say please download your photos everywhere the one with the big hard drive having that extra system on top of all your backups just makes me feel better about pictures so it doesn't really matter if it's photos or picture life
John:
Or you go back in time and use Everpix or another product that we might discuss in the later part of the show if we don't go long on this Thanksgiving stuff.
John:
Yeah, I'm not specifically endorsing photos.
John:
I'm endorsing the idea of Apple doing the obvious thing for photo services and it not being terrible.
Marco:
Yeah, and we had been talking and many people have been talking before they announced this of their other various photo solutions, things like PhotoStream before this, which is kind of like a half solution.
Marco:
And we've been calling for them to do something like this forever, but no one thought they actually would.
Marco:
And then not only did they do it, but it was good.
Marco:
Even from version 1.0, it wasn't perfect in 1.0, but it was pretty good.
Marco:
And the imperfections were only limited really to the front end app.
Marco:
The actual back end, the storage and the syncing engine, in my experience, and from what I gather, I think most people's experience, worked solidly from day one.
John:
Well, there was always like I said, there was there was bugs, but like, as long as they're not intractable, like a lot of times early on, people like I just have a bunch of black squares or in my thing, it would be like it thinks it has to re upload everything like and it's mistaken about that or all sorts of problems where either operations are taking a long time.
John:
Or a couple over, like, crashing in the middle of the import or whatever.
John:
But the bottom line is, is if you just kept trying, eventually it reached a point where it settled down.
John:
Which is not true of, for example, the time machine and spotlight thing that I described fighting with last time.
John:
That never settled down.
John:
The best you can say about photos is, sometimes it screwed up.
John:
1.0 had weird bugs.
John:
But in my personal experience is...
John:
i never had to nuke and pave right some people did so you know obviously it's not without its bugs but from my personal experiences even when it was weird it just eventually powered through with me not doing anything other than maybe repeatedly trying and settles into a state now where when i take a photo or when my wife takes a photo because the library is hers i don't want to get into this anyway on the phone and then i go to the mac eventually the picture shows up and that's all i ask for
Marco:
Again, you guys keep naming stuff I like too.
Marco:
That really, the Photos app is very, very good.
Marco:
And it was very good since 1.0.
Marco:
And it's only gotten better with 1.1.
Marco:
And I still do all of my editing first for photos that I shoot with the big camera.
Marco:
I still do editing first in Lightroom.
Marco:
And then I kind of like pick and edit in Lightroom and then export as full quality JPEG into Photos because I don't care for Photos editing tools too much.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
uh for iphone shot pictures they're fine and on the iphone i like having i like having that ability and and you know my my fancy pictures once i do like a first pass edit with lightroom i'm probably never going to touch them after that so like you know just just do it there export into photo library then it's faster because it doesn't have this giant raw file to deal with and uh it's nice it really is nice i uh i i have not i have no regrets about uh photo library
Marco:
Our second sponsor this week is Automatic.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Now, Automatic can help you in several ways.
Marco:
First of all, basic stuff.
Marco:
If you have a check engine error in your car, any kind of engine ECU error, Automatic can tell you through the phone exactly what the error is.
Marco:
And in many cases, let you clear the error if it's something temporary, like your gas cap was open.
Marco:
It has all the data coming in from your car.
Marco:
It can tell you things like how efficiently you're driving.
Marco:
If you want to hit certain goals, it can alert you if you're like hitting the brakes too hard, hitting the gas too hard.
Marco:
It can also tell you a log of your trips if you wanted to track that.
Marco:
So you can do things like have expense reports from your driving.
Marco:
You can just see where you go the most if you want.
Marco:
It can keep your parking location so you never lose your car in a parking lot.
Marco:
If you have an accident and it detects that through the port, it can even call emergency services for you if you are unable to.
Marco:
It can really do quite a bit.
Marco:
Now, they also have an app store with Automatic.
Marco:
Automatic.com slash apps.
Marco:
You can see over 20 apps so far, more being added all the time.
Marco:
You can use your car's data in all kinds of different ways.
Marco:
So, for example, they have a trigger with IFTTT, if this than that, so that you can build recipes for things like turn on my Nest thermostat when I'm close to home.
Marco:
They also have apps for things like Concur and FreshBooks for invoices and expense reports, Pebble Watch integration, License Plus.
Marco:
If you have a teenager who's learning how to drive and you want to track their driving and make sure that they are driving in a sane, calm, safe way, you can do that with this.
Marco:
There's all sorts of things you can do with the automatic apps and the automatic device.
Marco:
And of course, developers, check this out because you can do a lot here too.
Marco:
They have a whole API using OAuth2, REST API.
Marco:
Check it out.
Marco:
Very, very easy to use.
Marco:
Now, Automatic is normally $100 and there's no subscription fees.
Marco:
There's no monthly fee or anything.
Marco:
You just pay that one price up front and then that's it.
Marco:
You don't have to pay for the service every month.
Marco:
So normally this press up front is $100.
Marco:
They have a link.
Marco:
If you go to automatic.com slash ATP, you get 20% off.
Marco:
So it's just $80.
Marco:
And again, $80 up front one time and that's it.
Marco:
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Marco:
That includes free shipping in two business days and a 45-day risk-free return policy.
Marco:
Check it out at automatic.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks a lot.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Marco, do you want to go again or do we want to try to reverse the order here?
Marco:
It's a snake giraffe?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Marco goes next.
Casey:
All right.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
My number two, after all your other... I got to have like 10 now.
John:
After your 1.2, 1.3.
Marco:
So my next one on the list, John, is the continued growth of podcasting.
Marco:
I have really focused my career recently on podcasting on a number of fronts.
Marco:
We do this podcast.
Marco:
I have the podcast with my wife, Top4.
Marco:
I have the podcast with Underscore David Smith called Under the Radar.
Marco:
And of course, I make a podcast app called Overcast.
Marco:
See, Casey, this is how you plug things.
Marco:
Now, I'm really...
Marco:
I'm just very thankful that this industry continues to not only exist and be healthy, but to thrive and to grow.
Marco:
I love podcasting.
Marco:
I love it as a listener.
Marco:
I love it as a producer.
Marco:
I love it as a programmer.
Marco:
It is great.
Marco:
There's tons of opportunity as a programmer, as a listener.
Marco:
Podcasts are just in my life.
Marco:
I've been a podcast listener for long before I was really involved in them.
Marco:
And I just love listening to podcasts.
Marco:
I don't have to explain that to most people listening to this, probably.
Marco:
And also, as a podcaster, I love the act of podcasting.
Marco:
And I kind of had this tweet vomiting.
Marco:
Was it TweetStorm?
Marco:
What do they call it when you just tweet too much?
John:
Tweet vomiting.
John:
I think that's it.
John:
You got it.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
So I tweeted all over the place earlier today about...
Marco:
I've been pulling back a lot from blogging recently because the expectations and the reactions that you get out of blogging for me have become just really negative.
Marco:
Whenever I've blogged about anything substantial recently, I have often regretted it afterwards because the amount and the type of attention that results from it is not good for me.
Marco:
It's not pleasant.
Marco:
It's
Marco:
It's not satisfying.
Marco:
It actually just feels like a burden.
Marco:
And it has resulted in a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of tension, a lot of flames, and a lot of sensationalism that I just do not want.
Marco:
Blogging also takes a long time.
Marco:
Writing is difficult.
Marco:
If you don't write, you might not realize.
Marco:
But writing is really quite difficult and time-consuming, especially if you're trying to do it well.
Marco:
It's very, very hard to really do well.
Marco:
If I wanted to do things like... If I wanted to write this as a blog post of just like... Here I am talking about how great podcasting is compared to blogging.
Marco:
This would take me probably four hours to write as a blog post.
Marco:
And it wouldn't say it as well.
Marco:
Meanwhile, in a podcast, I can basically with no preparation... Spew out random thoughts like this for about four minutes...
Marco:
And have it all covered and have expressed pretty much all the same ideas, possibly even better, in a more informal way that you people listening to this can hear me as a human being.
Marco:
You know me from the context of the rest of the show and for any other shows you've listened to that I've been on.
Marco:
You kind of give me the benefit of the doubt because you have some sense of my personality from this.
Marco:
And it's just a much more humane medium.
Marco:
So with podcasting, I don't get many flames.
Marco:
I hardly ever get any kind of negativity about things I say on a podcast.
Marco:
I'm able to get out way more ideas per unit of time effort put into it.
Marco:
And it just feels better.
Marco:
It's hard to explain in full how it feels, but I just think, for me, it is right now a more natural communication form and a safer one because I'm kind of burnt out on the negativity that I get whenever I write anything.
Marco:
This isn't to say that I'm going to stop writing, but I've certainly dramatically slowed down, and it's no coincidence.
Marco:
As I do more podcasts, I write less because I just find podcasting works better for me right now at this point in my life.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
I've really been phenomenally lucky to have been a part of Neutral, of this show, of Analog, my other show on RelayFM with Mike Hurley.
Marco:
Good job, Casey.
Marco:
Way to plug.
Marco:
Finally.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
We keep setting you up for the shot.
Marco:
You just keep walking away.
Casey:
Wow, that's both of you with a sports metaphor.
Casey:
I'm very proud of you both.
Casey:
Anyway, so I've been very thankful to be a part of this and to be able to participate.
Casey:
And, you know, as we've discussed some on the show and I've discussed quite a bit on Analog, I have always felt some modicum of guilt for kind of having just found my way on here by accident.
Accidental.
But...
Casey:
But no, the community's been really good to me, and it's been a really phenomenal—I've been phenomenally lucky to be a part of this and a part of the community that we're in.
Marco:
Maybe next year we can finally convince you that, like, you didn't—you weren't just, like, here accidentally.
Marco:
Like, you are a host of this show.
Marco:
You are one of three hosts of this show.
Marco:
You are not just some guy who we stuck in a chair.
Marco:
All right, just sit there while we talk.
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, on an infinite timescale, perhaps I'll believe that.
Casey:
But anyway, I can hear John rolling his eyes right now.
John:
We're all here accidentally is what I was thinking.
John:
That's true, actually.
John:
It's true.
Casey:
But no, but it's been a really phenomenal and I couldn't be more thankful.
Casey:
I was going to make this joke in a really cheesy way, but I'm going to say it genuinely.
Casey:
I couldn't be more thankful to be doing it with you two fine gentlemen.
Casey:
And I'm so unbelievably proud of the work that we've done here and unbelievably thankful that it's gone on as long as it has and that any of you listening to this right now have stuck around and have listened to the show as long as you have.
Casey:
So thank you to you guys and to everyone listening because this has been really phenomenal.
John:
I think I would write more if I didn't have a job.
John:
amen brother because marco's right that like you know if you podcast more like you can get a lot of ideas out that you would otherwise have to write up and you feel like well i already said it on the podcast it's like out of my system you feel like if you have something you just need to express right but mainly for me i feel like it's just it's not enough hours in the day and it's like marco said it's just so much more efficient to just ramble for a couple minutes on a podcast and you feel like well that got that out of my system when it would take way longer to write
John:
if i didn't have to go to work every day i would have all those extra hours and i probably would do the thing that marco's done it occasionally and so have i although you know less so now that i don't write anything anymore practically but like where you either talk about something on a podcast and then inspires you to write it up or you write something on your blog and that inspires you to talk about it on the podcast that that synergy i still enjoy i just never have time for the part where you write anything
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right, so does that make it my turn, I take it?
Casey:
It does.
Casey:
All right, so I'd actually... This is a little bit of a cop-out, but I have other options as well.
Casey:
I actually am super thankful for my big, semi-fancy camera.
Casey:
I have...
Casey:
An Olympus OM-D-EM10, which is a terrible name.
Casey:
It is a Micro Four Thirds camera.
Casey:
And for a long time, especially after Marco and Tiff and Aaron and I got reacquainted after Marco and I lost touch for a long time, I've always been...
Casey:
I don't know if jealous is the word I'm looking for, but I've always been intrigued by really nice camera equipment.
Casey:
And I've always fancied myself, like interested in photography, but I wouldn't say I've ever been particularly great at it.
Casey:
But right before Declan was born, we finally bought this Micro Four Thirds camera, which was a fair bit of money.
Casey:
I mean, it was something like $1,500 for the camera and a couple of lenses or the body and a
Casey:
And I wasn't sure if it was really worth it.
Casey:
And Aaron wasn't sure if it was really worth it because we had, I think, a 6, an iPhone 6 at the time, which takes and took really great pictures.
Casey:
But I am so thankful for big digital cameras still being a thing because having a camera with glass that's bigger than a fingertip just makes for some incredible pictures.
Casey:
And it's been really...
Casey:
It's been really awesome to see some of the pictures I've been able to capture of not only Declan, but my whole family and extended family through this camera that really in the grand scheme of things is not that terribly much money.
Casey:
And so I'm extraordinarily thankful that it exists.
Casey:
And I'm extraordinarily thankful that I bought one and that I've been able to make some decent pictures come out of this camera.
Casey:
And so digital photography in general, not just live photos, that's what I'm thankful for.
John:
Yeah, I'm still jealous of all your nice cameras, but I felt like going through my old photo library as I was gathering photos for holiday things, as you do, and also playing with the performance of photos and the new iMac and enjoying the fact that I can scroll and do stuff.
John:
Although, God, let me put an item in the notes about my latest photo complaints.
John:
I don't want to do it now, but I have one.
Marco:
But anyway.
John:
We'll see you there for the less thankful episode next week.
John:
Yeah, back to a normally scheduled complaining.
John:
But as I scroll backwards in time towards when my oldest child was a baby, you do see the quality of the pictures go down.
John:
I think it's going to be less pronounced for Declan because I think...
John:
like you know the the curve is starting to to level off a little bit because there's sort of the the limit of uh the human visual system and what uh feature sizes you can resolve at typical distances and blah blah blah uh but we got our very first digital camera ever uh before my son was born my first child and it was not very good quality because those were early days and you can really see it um
John:
So it's kind of a shame I can't go back in time with a fancier camera.
John:
And I think, well, maybe I'm thinking the same thing now with the current pictures I'm taking of my kid with my camera that does not cost as much as a good used car.
John:
And they're fine.
John:
They're good.
John:
But I can tell the difference between my camera and a fancy camera.
John:
Like, it's impossible not to be able to tell the difference, especially if there is not 100% blazing sunlight on a clear day.
John:
Then all of a sudden...
John:
I can tell the difference.
John:
So I very often do consider buying a fancy camera and maybe someday I will.
John:
But for now, I'm limping along with my silly Super Zoom cameras and my iPhone.
John:
So that's not that bad.
Marco:
I'm trying to figure out what used car that's pretty good you could get for $1,500.
Marco:
Honda Accord.
Casey:
Of course.
Casey:
Of course.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So, John, what else are you thankful for?
John:
All right.
John:
My next item on the list is probably not surprising and boring to everybody who is a tech nerd, including both of you.
John:
But I put it on my list anyway because I feel like this was not the summer of George.
John:
This was the year of big SSDs in my house.
John:
um ssds has been around forever everyone's gonna be like oh you gotta get an ssd it'll change your life blah blah but i'm like i'm i'm not interested until i could put all my stuff on it even when fusion drive came out which i think was a really great idea and from all accounts has worked really well i'm like but for me i just want to hold out until i can put all my crap on one ssd i remember on podcasts many years ago i don't was it this podcast was it some other one i was like
John:
i just want to hold out for a one terabyte ssd like oh good luck it's gonna be so expensive you can get one today but it's like thousands of dollars like yeah i just want to wait for them to be cheap oh well you're gonna be waiting a while well i did i waited a really long time and eventually one terabyte ssds became less than ridiculously expensive still very expensive but as soon as they came down in price to like like three digit prices you know 500 600 i got one for a mac
John:
uh and it made a big difference as you would imagine from spinning disc to an ssd but the big thing for me is that they are big ssds that i can fit all of my stuff and the size of all of my stuff has changed a lot over the years um and i like you're always trying to keep the all of my stuff size somewhere within the bounds of economical hard drive size but hard drives gotta start getting so big like two one terabyte two terabyte three terabyte four terabyte spinning discs it was like oh no i gotta make sure my stuff doesn't fill up well turns out
John:
My stuff has been growing more slowly and my stuff comfortably fits in one terabyte.
John:
So now I have a terabyte SSD.
John:
When I bought the iMac, it has a terabyte SSD.
John:
And now finally, the two main computers in the house are all SSD and have all of our stuff on them.
John:
And I'm very happy about it.
Casey:
Yeah, I held out a really long time before getting an SSD because the first computer I had with an SSD was my old work computer, which I got in the middle of 2012, but was a late 2011 high-res antique glare 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Casey:
And I had always thought...
Casey:
As I often do with these things.
Casey:
Oh, I'm sure it's faster.
Casey:
I'm sure it's great.
Casey:
But it can't possibly make that much.
Casey:
Oh, my God, it makes that much of a difference.
Casey:
It's just night and day.
Casey:
And because of that, you know, I'm still rocking one of those identical computer to that work one, except with a platter hard drive as my personal computer.
Casey:
and I never touch the thing because it's just unusable because it has a platter hard drive.
Casey:
Get yourself an SSD, even if you get a little tiny one and you have to put all your other data elsewhere.
Casey:
It makes a world of difference.
Casey:
Definitely spend the money.
Marco:
Our final sponsor this week is Bushel.
Marco:
Go to Bushel.com to see for yourself.
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:
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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:
That's pretty great.
Marco:
bushel makes the complex simple so you can focus on what matters your first three devices are free forever and each additional device is just two dollars per month with no contracts and no commitments learn more at bushel.com thanks a lot to bushel for sponsoring our show all right marco what's next for you so next for me is slack interesting okay that's a good one i would have put that on there if i had thought of it
Casey:
Yeah, I agree with that.
Marco:
So first of all, Slack is really just good.
Marco:
As a product, Slack is good.
Marco:
When I first saw it, I thought, well, that's just IRC.
Marco:
Just fancied up IRC.
Marco:
And that's true.
Marco:
It is just fancied up IRC.
Marco:
But it's really good.
John:
turns out fancy.irc is really nice i think the key feature is not that it's like fancy.irc the key feature is that like it is a name brand company thing you can get the slack app for the platform of your choice and it is slack irc has always been like i guess you like get an irc client or something i don't really know how your client works just type slash something like you know it was like a client just just get slack and then you've got it and you don't have to worry about people figuring out it's all point and click and
Marco:
limited amount of command line silliness yeah and irc you know really it has a lot of shortcomings compared to slack you know not just the client thing but just like the complexity that the geeky roots of it uh it's and the limitations of it not being persistent on the client like you know it's just it's not yeah irc has its place for sure but slack does too and and i think slack is by far the more friendly option of the two
Marco:
And it also just has way more features, and it's pretty nice.
Marco:
Anyway, so I like Slack a lot.
Marco:
And I like that kind of related to earlier how I mentioned I was kind of worn out from negativity that I've gotten from being so public online.
Marco:
Slack allows me to have these small private groups of friends that things that I would have previously posted to Twitter, now a lot of those things are going to Slack.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
and a lot of the conversations that i'm having a lot of the keeping up with friends and what they're doing a lot more of that is happening in slack now than on twitter for me and i think that's good because for so long we've had things on the web where where like the the the best communication methods on the web were so often public or at least semi-public like facebook where it's like it's
Marco:
It's supposed to be private most of the time, but sometimes you mess up a setting and everything gets public or it's public by default or whatever.
Marco:
It's nice to have something that is private.
Marco:
I do think there's a place for those things and there's a balance to be struck.
Marco:
And it's nice that we are willing to explore that balance rather than just make everything public and ad-driven on the entire internet in every way we communicate.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so it's nice.
Marco:
Having Slack for me has been a nice kind of, I don't know, like a mental reprieve from everything being in public.
Marco:
Because the fact is, so many of my friends are people who I've met in this business, people like you guys who I work with, who I don't live near.
Marco:
It's not like I can like sit down and have lunch with you guys every day.
Marco:
You know, I work at home for myself.
Marco:
You know, I have lunch with my wife and my kid and my dog.
Marco:
But my friend interactions are limited mostly to online stuff.
Marco:
So it's nice to have just like a kind of like private, safe place for that to happen.
Marco:
And not only does Slack provide that for me, but from what I hear from a lot of other people, it provides that to lots of people.
Marco:
This isn't just a that's fine for Marco thing.
Marco:
A lot of people use Slack this way in small groups with their friends.
Marco:
And it's really great for that.
Marco:
And I'm very thankful that such a thing not only exists, but is getting enough traction to be useful.
Casey:
The comedy of this is that as we record, today Slack was down for many people for like half the day.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I wasn't going to mention that, but yeah.
Marco:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
This is the first time I've ever seen downtime.
John:
This is the honeymoon period before Marco goes on a big rant about Slack being a centralized thing owned and controlled by a single company and how they're screwing all the clients and messing up their API and are foisting ads on people who use Slack.
John:
So enjoy it while... No, I'm being negative.
John:
Anyway, I echo every...
John:
I echo everything that Marco said, basically, like in the big continuum of between public and like I am is the private thing.
John:
It's like a small group, one on one, completely private.
John:
You know, you have instant message.
John:
And then out in public, you have web forums or comments or bulletin boards.
John:
And then later things like Twitter and stuff like that.
John:
And then Slack is a nice middle ground, kind of the same middle ground that Google Plus was going for, but missed.
John:
Where it's not one to one like I am and it's not in public or email for that matter and it's not in public like message boards or Twitter.
John:
It's in between and it's nice.
John:
The only downside, of course, is now that we're all in a million different slacks because these in between things are sort of self organizing groups of people around particular interests or institutions or whatever.
John:
And those circles overlap a lot, but we have to be in all of them.
John:
If you want to keep up with this group of friends and that group of friends and that group of friends, then you're in three slacks that form this weird Venn diagram.
John:
Sometimes I have trouble keeping track of what slack I said which, because it's all in the same application.
John:
It's one stupid single window.
John:
Work on that, guys.
John:
You know, I like windows.
John:
John Syracuse says, I need more windows, please.
John:
What a surprise.
John:
More than one?
John:
Call me crazy.
John:
I've got a big screen here.
John:
I...
John:
I lose track of where I said things and what group of friends I said them to and who is on what page about what.
John:
But I think anyway, I think that's a good problem to have.
John:
And I have liked having this middle ground, even though it has meant one more place for me to check for things that have gone on.
John:
I am not a Slack completionist, so.
John:
uh i don't have that problem but still i do have to and slack to its credit gives you lots of really cool options for how you want to be notified and about what so uh i like it too um it's uh i'm sad that i didn't put it on my list now i'm the marco stealing things from other people's list i should have thought of that marco is the tiff
Casey:
I completely agree with Slack.
Casey:
And it doesn't matter who your particular group of friends is or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
It's just having a group of people, even be it friends or family, that you can communicate with often geographically all over the place is just really fantastic.
Casey:
And one of the things I love about Slack that has in some ways ruined me for iMessage and other things is the rich text previews or whatever you call them.
Casey:
So if you put a link to a tweet into a Slack channel, it will do its best to expand that tweet and show you the contents of the tweet and maybe even a picture if there's media attached.
Casey:
And oh my God, I wish I could have that for iMessage.
Casey:
That would be so, so useful.
Casey:
And I really love that feature.
Casey:
It's such a silly thing, but it makes a world of difference.
Casey:
yeah so it's my turn um this is a weird one i am super thankful for my lightning to hdmi adapter which which is an odd thing to say but um this past weekend um as with many weekends in the fall uh aaron and i went to um to see the university of virginia uh play football um aaron is a wahoo
Casey:
I am actually a Hokie, which means I went to Virginia Tech.
Casey:
We are big rivals.
Casey:
Just go with it, Marco.
Marco:
This is like when John talks about destiny.
Marco:
This is just another language.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
We're going to cut this out just like the Cooley stuff, right?
Casey:
That cuts deep, John.
Casey:
So anyway, so basically we are big rival schools.
Casey:
So Marco, this is like TIFF going to Michigan.
Casey:
Does that make more sense to you?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
That is the one sports rivalry that I'm familiar with simply because I grew up in Columbus.
Marco:
So you couldn't not know about that one.
Casey:
Fun fact, the correct answer is actually Penn State.
Casey:
But anyway, the point is that... Wait, what?
Casey:
Just let it go.
Marco:
Wait, wait, wait.
Marco:
Like OSU and Penn State are rivals?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Not Michigan?
Casey:
And Michigan.
Casey:
Well, no, no, no.
Casey:
You are right to say Michigan and Ohio State, but in the same conference as Penn State.
Casey:
Both my younger brothers went to Penn State, so that's where my...
Casey:
association is.
Casey:
But anyway, so the point, I bring all this up because we went tailgating.
Casey:
Yay, sports ball.
Casey:
So when we went tailgating, over the years, we've been doing this for a few years now, we've upgraded our tailgate setup from just a grill to a grill and a kind of okay generator and
Casey:
to a grill and a kind of fancy generator.
Casey:
And so grill, fancy generator and TV.
Casey:
And this year, this past weekend, actually, it just so happened that my beloved Virginia Tech Hokies were playing a noon game that I really wanted to watch.
Casey:
And the UVA game was at 3.30.
Casey:
And so we were tailgating while the Hokies were playing.
Casey:
And it was on ESPN.
Casey:
The problem with that is we have an over-the-air antenna that we bring to the tailgate, and it's full HD, so we can watch all the local channels in Charlottesville on HD in the middle of a parking lot, basically, at the University of Virginia, which is really incredible, and I'm thankful for that, too.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
In this case, it was ESPN.
Casey:
And so what I did was I got on my phone and I plugged my phone into the lightning to HDMI adapter, plugged an HDMI cable from that into the TV.
Casey:
And we were able to watch my beloved Virginia Tech Hokies lose as we're sitting in the middle of this parking lot at UVA, which is just, I mean, to think about it, like I remember watching Nickelodeon as a kid and
Casey:
And watching like Double Dare and some of those game shows.
Casey:
And you would see that like the grand prize was this god awful terrible video phone.
Casey:
But this was like, you know, the early 90s.
Casey:
And so you could probably only video dial like two other people in the entire country.
Casey:
But, you know, it was this little postage stamp size, like black and white video phone.
Casey:
And it was amazing.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Um, and I remember thinking to myself, how could that possibly be that you could see video, you know, on a telephone and then fast forward, what is it?
Casey:
15, 20 years, whatever the case may be.
Casey:
And I'm sitting in a parking lot with a full 32 inch TV showing a picture that's coming off my cellular telephone.
Casey:
Like, it's just ridiculous that that's a possibility.
Casey:
And so this little obscenely expensive $50 lightning to HDMI adapter made all that possible.
Casey:
That and my data, which, of course, it was like two weeks ago that I finally ditched my unlimited data plan, which is perhaps not a good choice.
Casey:
So it only cost me like two or three gigs of data for the two or three hours that we were watching the football game.
Casey:
So I'm really thankful for that.
John:
You should take your old Apple TV once you get your new one, duct tape it to the back of your TV, and then you can just airplay to it.
John:
You can get a refund on the $50 cable.
John:
That'll cut into the price of the new Apple TV.
John:
Yeah, and then you could also charge your phone.
Casey:
Yeah, that makes it so much better.
Casey:
Well, I was able to charge my phone because one of the ports on the Lightning to HDMI adapter is another Lightning port.
Casey:
Oh, I didn't know that.
Casey:
Yeah, so it passes through power, and since we had a generator right there, I passed through power to the phone, which worked out really well.
John:
I'm concerned about how much...
John:
Noxious fumes you're inhaling with this generator that's running next to your car in a parking lot with a bunch of other people, or is this a Mr. Fusion where you just put banana peels into it?
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
It's actually a very, very fancy generator.
Casey:
It's not ours.
Casey:
It's one of the guys we tailgate with, but it's an inverter generator, so it emits a perfect sine wave, which is pretty cool.
Casey:
no no i'm talking about the the no no no no no i a different i know i know i understand what you're saying i was just an aside so um but we we bring like these 50 foot extension cords so the thing is like 50 feet away from us probably near somebody else but it's in the other air right okay i got it not our problem um and strictly speaking like where we tailgate is actually not it's it's not a parking lot we're in a little field in front of the astronomy building uva don't be creepy
Casey:
And so it's a small field.
Casey:
And we try to point the generator pretty much away from everyone else.
Casey:
But it's not near us.
John:
And yet I remain concerned.
John:
How about just like, can't you just have Marco come and just park his Tesla next to you and use the big battery?
Casey:
If I would kill to have Marco come to a football game with me, that would be amazing.
Casey:
But no, it's not quite that simple.
John:
I think that would do it, though.
John:
The generator, you just need electric power, right?
John:
So if you go there in an electric car with a huge battery fully charged, that'll do you for tailgating, right?
John:
Probably.
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
I mean, the TV we use is old, so it's probably not very efficient.
Casey:
But there are times when we'll use a griddle.
Casey:
So, for example, this upcoming weekend...
Casey:
um it's our big game it's it's uh aaron's team and my team playing each other and this year it's in charlottesville so we're going to go um and we are probably going to use a griddle which is a heating element which which is you know a million watts and so for that you'd probably want a generator because it would drain marco's phantom tesla in like three and a half seconds
John:
I don't think it would.
Casey:
I'm being a little facetious here, but let's do the math.
John:
Someone in this chat room, get out of the slide rule.
Marco:
Well, well, for one thing, I know that to charge a Tesla from like a 40 amp outlet still takes like 10 hours.
John:
you don't realize how much power they have and granted it's not perfectly efficient while converting the power but it takes a ridiculous amount of power to move a car like that yeah you see that's what i'm saying you should realize how much power it is just by it's not even doing the math by thinking about they're taking this multi-thousand dollar car and accelerating it and decelerating and pushing it through the wind for you know 300 miles
John:
Anyway, this is the future of tailgating.
John:
Mark my words, electric power and pickup trucks or the entire bed is a bunch of lithium ion batteries.
Casey:
You're probably right.
Casey:
Quick real time follow up.
Casey:
Two quick things.
Casey:
First of all, it occurred to me that tailgating is probably a uniquely American thing.
Casey:
I sure hope so.
Casey:
Maybe the Australians get it because they're America light.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Please email Casey.
Casey:
Yeah, please email me.
Casey:
I didn't mean that in an offensive way, but I'm screwed now.
Casey:
Anyway, so what that means is, so before a football game or egg ball game, depending on how you look at it, a lot of times what people will do is they will go to the parking lot outside the stadium they're going to, and they will consume adult beverages and, you know, just kind of chat and hang out and grill food and
Casey:
And eat food and do all the things you would expect a bunch of Americans to do, but do it outside.
Casey:
And so some people take it a little more seriously, like we do, and bring a generator so they can watch other football games while they're waiting to watch the football game they want to see.
Casey:
So that's what tailgating is.
Casey:
And the etymology there is because oftentimes you'll hang out around the tailgate of a pickup truck, although neither of us have pickup trucks.
Casey:
And the other piece of real-time follow-up, it is not the Lightning to HDMI adapter.
Casey:
The official name is Lightning Digital AV Adapter, which I would have known had I done my homework.
Casey:
So, John, your turn.
John:
This is my last one on my list, unless I can think of something else before we do the next round, although we're coming to the end of the show anyway, so maybe this will be... Well, I've got at least one more I want to talk about, but Carol... I know, so you guys will have the lightning round after this.
John:
Casey just did his lightning item.
Casey:
I know, I was about to say.
Casey:
I was too early on that one.
John:
This one should be easy to guess for anyone who's been listening to me on this or any other podcast.
John:
My third item is Destiny.
John:
Which counts as a tech product.
John:
Not since Quake 3 Arena and Unreal Tournament 2004 have I spent this much time playing a single video game.
John:
My PlayStation 4 is essentially a Destiny machine, especially since I've removed it from the television for terrible burn-in reasons.
John:
All I do on that thing is play Destiny, and I play it a lot.
John:
And I'm afraid to look at the total number of hours recently, but...
John:
You would think it would get boring, but obviously it's an MMO, so you're playing with other people, and that extends the life of the game.
John:
It's the same reason Quick Theory Arena and Unreal Tournament were for so long, because you are playing with other people, so the game is much less predictable than playing a single-player game or a game against computer-controlled opponents, because people are inscrutable.
John:
And kind of like Quick Theory Arena and Unreal Tournament, there is a steady flow of content.
John:
back in the old days it was maps that other people would make so you download new wraps for for quake or new maps for unreal and you try them out sometimes the new maps would come from the people who made the games most of the times not uh and in the case of uh destiny all the new content's coming from bungie but they've had a steady stream of expansions that yes you pay for but like
John:
I was talking about this with someone recently, like the dollar per hour of enjoyment I've gotten at a destiny there.
John:
It's ratio is phenomenal compared to pretty much anything else.
John:
Like, cause yeah, it is 60 bucks for the game, 30 bucks for an expansion, 40 bucks for another expansion, but do the division on the number of hours and you're like, Oh,
John:
This is like the cheapest entertainment dollars ever.
John:
So the expansions really have kept it fresh for me.
John:
And, you know, the constant adjustments to the game and the systems in the game and the items and everything that Bungie is doing from week to week, not just for the expansions, but from week to week, they're doing little tweaks here and there and explaining why they do them.
John:
That's an interesting sort of surrounding context for the game where there's the game and then there's the talking about the game.
John:
Then there's the reading about the future things that are going to be done in the game.
John:
And I think for the most part,
John:
but bungie has been keeping things moving in the right direction there's a few you know questionable decisions that they're going back and forth on but 2.0 the big 2.0 change to the entire game engine really addressed a lot of the worst parts of the progression system in the early game um so destiny is my first mmo because i generally hate mmos but i really like first person shooter games and uh destiny is a really good first person shooter and as far as i can tell having never played any mmos before i think it's a really fun mmo too so thumbs up on destiny
Casey:
Did you ever get into Counter-Strike out of curiosity?
Casey:
It's not quite the same kind of game.
John:
But it is, though.
John:
You're playing against other human beings, and so it's much more interesting than playing it by yourself.
John:
I tend to stay away from the more militaristic first-person shooters.
John:
The closer they get to real-life guns, because I'm not a real-life gun aficionado,
John:
So the closer they get to real-life guns and real-life military, I just find it off-putting, even though Counter-Strike is still, you know, basically like, you know, like I say about Quick Theory and Unreal Tournament, it's basically a game of tech.
John:
It has very little to do with actual guns, but it's close enough that it sort of repels me a little bit, which is why I prefer completely fantastical, you know, space marines or shooting aliens or powered armor or whatever other weird stuff you've got in franchises like...
Casey:
halo or even something like years of war kind of i guess but i i tend to stay away from the military things and destiny i guess technically they're kind of the military but it's really just like lasers and pew pew and space aliens no i only ask because i logged a lot of time playing counter-strike when i was at virginia tech and not doing the things i should have been doing like studying but um yeah i loved counter-strike and i i loved the quake as well i think quake
Casey:
two it was so long ago i think that was my jam but gosh it was forever ago all right uh does that mean we're out of sponsor so i guess marco uh want to do your lightning round entry i it's it's a little bit this barely made it on the list really because i'm i'm still a little bit like 50 50 on how much i like it but would you say it's your number six
Marco:
but i'm gonna go with the apple watch uh because it really has driven a positive influence in my life uh and the apple watch itself i keep this is another one of those blog posts i keep trying to write and starting to write and failing to write uh i keep meaning to write my like apple watch six months in post which of course now it's like seven months in but
Marco:
i started writing it when it was three months in um and and the apple watch it's easy to just look at it now and assume it's always been here because i i do wear mine every day uh i've i've tried going without it for a few days and i don't miss it as much as i think i would before i do it
Marco:
And there are parts of it that haven't been as sticky for me just because they aren't that reliable.
Marco:
And the things that I like about it, there's an asterisk after each one.
Marco:
I do love it for notifications.
Marco:
I do love it for very quick Siri things.
Marco:
I do love it for the activity tracking.
Marco:
And I do love having the weather thing on the face and the other complications.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But all those things are kind of like 75% there.
Marco:
So this is kind of tentatively there.
Marco:
I'm very happy this product exists.
Marco:
But I think it still needs a lot more work on both the hardware and the software before it's very good.
Marco:
But I do like where it is now.
Marco:
And it did something that I didn't think was possible, which is it transformed me into being a watch person.
Marco:
As I mentioned, when it was new, I hadn't worn a watch before this since high school.
Marco:
Now that we're in the cell phone revolution, I really didn't see the point of a watch.
Marco:
But now that I have one, I like it a lot.
Marco:
And so now I'm starting to look at other watches that don't have screens and don't have batteries.
John:
That's when you need another expensive hobby.
Marco:
Right?
Marco:
Isn't that great?
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
And I'm starting to take joy in the design of nice watches.
Marco:
And so it's kind of nice, you know, so we'll see what happens.
Marco:
But I like the Apple Watch in general.
Marco:
It's a good product.
Marco:
I wouldn't say it's necessarily a great one yet, but it is a good product now.
Marco:
And it has driven positive change in my life.
Marco:
So I appreciate that.
Casey:
You know, it's funny you bring up the Apple Watch as your lightning round entry because my lightning round entry is the Apple Watch.
Casey:
I was going to say the exact same thing.
Casey:
And I think the piece that is most startling to me is the notifications, which you brought up a moment ago.
Casey:
I haven't heard my phone except when I've accidentally turned the ringer back on since I received my Apple Watch, which was what, like May or something like that?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So I haven't heard my phone since then.
Casey:
And I think that's a good thing.
Casey:
And I had even before the Apple Watch, I had called a lot of my notifications and brought that number way, way, way down.
Casey:
And, you know, I turned off a lot of Twitter from Twitter notifications.
Casey:
I turned off, you know, like Instagram notifications, a lot of those that I really didn't need to be notified about.
Casey:
I had turned off and.
Casey:
Even with all of those notifications off, you know, I haven't turned those back on since I've gotten the watch, but even what remains things like text messages or emails from VIPs or what have you, nobody else has to know when that stuff is happening.
Casey:
I get a nice little tap, tap, tap on my wrist and that's that.
Casey:
And yeah,
Casey:
I really, really, really love that.
Casey:
And I, too, have in my list of things to do, my six months in, now seven months in Apple Watch post, I, too, have been procrastinating because I haven't figured out what my angle is, really.
Casey:
But I completely concur with you that...
Casey:
Especially for a device that, as with most things I hemmed and hawed about, I'm really glad I got it.
Casey:
And I love it so much for just keeping that noise clutter out of my life.
Casey:
And yes, of course, I'm still getting notified about these things, but I don't know, just having it be silent.
Casey:
I just like so much.
Casey:
And maybe it's just because I feel like it's kind of disrespectful to have your devices binging and bonging while other people are around.
Casey:
And I just love that my phone has been silent since May.
Casey:
And that's really awesome.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Now I'm sad.
Casey:
Now I'm sad.
John:
Yeah, you brought it up.
John:
Yeah, I was going to say, if you two had not mentioned the Apple Watch, it would have been weird to have none of us mention Apple's new product line, the big thing, the latest big thing.
John:
I guess we're not counting Apple TV, which none of us also mentioned.
John:
But the latest big thing from Apple, the Apple Watch, kind of towards the end of our list.
John:
I probably wouldn't put it on mine, mostly because the Apple Watch has...
John:
not change the fact that i am not a watch person i do not like things attached to my wrist my wife is currently real time heckling me about how often i forget to put my watch on and my my plan what i'm doing is i i plan to always wear it to work but i very often forget when i do wear it to work i find it convenient just like you said casey to have the little tap taps on the wrist
John:
um to you know to be able to have it track like even though i don't do what marco does with like actually trying to fill the circles and stuff i do like to get the stand-up reminders and i do make a little bit of extra effort to be more mobile at work because it basically reminds you like it's like all those apps i have run various times for rsi and my mac to remind you hey i know you're kind of like in the zone on some issue uh but remember to get up and just like go refill your water cup or you know take a walk around or do something else
John:
um and and i do find it especially convenient uh when you know so i don't have to don't have to dig out my phone even my phone is sitting on the desk it just seems so much and even with touch id it seems like so much more of an effort to pick the thing up put my thumb on the thing on my incredibly slow iphone 6 without the s to wait those extra seven milliseconds for the thumbprint to go on whereas in the watch none of that is involved you can just look at it and
John:
And Apple Pay on the watch, I find it also much nicer than doing Apple Pay on the phone.
John:
I do like Apple Pay.
John:
I use it whenever I possibly can.
John:
I use Apple Pay.
John:
And the double tap on the watch is nicer than, again, putting the phone near the thing and trying to do the thumbprint.
John:
No, it's not reading my Touch ID.
John:
And then it's just automatically unlocked on your wrist.
John:
So I wouldn't put it on my list because it is just reinforced that I am not a watch person.
John:
And I can also say that the watch is like something that...
John:
I'm not going to say I wouldn't have bought it on my own because I did buy it on my own, but it was kind of like, well, I should probably buy it to see.
John:
But all the fuss is about like it's kind of like I bought it for work, work being this podcast, whereas if I wasn't on a podcast and wasn't writing about tech stuff, I probably wouldn't have bought it.
John:
uh in the end i'm still glad i bought it but i'm let's put it this way i'm not going to be rushing out to buy the next version of the apple watch probably wait a couple of revisions until it gets way thinner because i think a lot of my resistance to the watch is not the apple watch specifically but watches in general i just don't like things on my wrist so this they can make things smaller and lighter and less like an airstream trailer that will make it more attractive to me oh god that's fantastic
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
And I know I said it earlier, but it would really be wrong of me not to say thanks to all our listeners one more time and our sponsors as well.
Casey:
So thank you to our listeners and to our three sponsors.
Marco:
Squarespace, Automatic, and Bushel.
John:
All right.
John:
And we will see you next week.
John:
Are we doing a tag team?
John:
I got the... I'm with you.
John:
We will see you next week.
John:
Do you say we will see you?
John:
We don't actually see them.
Marco:
I do say that.
Marco:
Thank you for ruining it now.
John:
All right.
John:
It's fine.
John:
I just... I don't want you to... Don't overthink it.
Marco:
Now the show is over, they didn't even mean to begin, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research, Marco and Casey wouldn't let him, cause it was accidental, oh it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, 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-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental, they didn't mean to.
Casey:
That was awesome.
Casey:
That was a really good idea, John.
Marco:
I do want to add one more kind of bonus one.
Marco:
Of course you do.
Marco:
Oh, here we go.
Marco:
So one is the Apple Pencil.
Marco:
And this is a really short one because it's easy when you say, what's the best of the year?
Marco:
The stuff that came most recently tends to be more weighted in your mind.
Marco:
So I don't know what I'm going to think long term about it.
Marco:
But the Apple Pencil is really cool.
Marco:
And yes, the Apple TV is also new.
Marco:
The Apple TV, I think, is more of a mixed bag in terms of complexity and some of its remaining shortcomings and everything.
Marco:
But the Apple Pencil really only does one thing.
Marco:
And it does that one thing already today from day one.
Marco:
And it does it shockingly well once you can find one.
Marco:
But it does it shockingly well.
Marco:
And it is so good.
Marco:
And it's so nice to use that it is making me keep borrowing Tiff's iPad Pro and keep wishing I had more of a reason to use this pencil.
Marco:
Because I am not a visual artist.
Marco:
I don't illustrate things.
Marco:
I don't make diagrams.
Marco:
I don't take notes.
Marco:
I don't really have a good reason to use it.
Marco:
But I wish I did because it's just so pleasant and delightful and just like technically satisfying.
Marco:
Like once I know how good it is, like it's just so nice to use.
Marco:
So what are you doing with it?
Marco:
Right now I'm just playing around.
Marco:
Maybe I should start trying to take notes on things.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Right now I'm just playing around.
Marco:
And then the second thing is Tesla.
Marco:
I don't own a Tesla yet.
Marco:
I'm planning on buying one soon, but I don't own one yet.
Marco:
One thing I like about Tesla, and I think in 2015 they really came into their own with this, that in the absence of Steve Jobs now, the world is kind of low on genius billionaires that are kind of near the tech industry that are making things really interesting for everybody.
Marco:
And it's fun to be in one of those groups.
Marco:
Like it's fun.
Marco:
It was fun to be a fan of Apple when Steve was really at his peak, which unfortunately before he died.
Marco:
But it's fun to be a fan of a crazy billionaire company that's doing crazy good things.
Marco:
Jeff Bezos has always almost been that kind of person, but not that kind of person.
Marco:
Steve Jobs definitely was.
Marco:
And I think Elon Musk is that kind of person where, yeah, he's out of his mind, but he's also a genius.
Marco:
And he also is very driven to keep making really interesting products that are pushing things forward in this area that he's working in.
Marco:
and so i think i think what tesla is doing is really cool even if i don't end up buying one which honestly i probably will buy one i'm pretty i've pretty much decided that now but it's just really cool to be in one of those fandoms of these kind of products by these crazy billionaires again because they they do things that seem so audacious uh and and when they do them well it's really nice
Marco:
And Apple did it well.
Marco:
And now Tesla seems to be doing it well.
Marco:
And so that's pretty cool.
John:
Activision is kind of like a crazy billionaire.
John:
Maybe you should try Destiny.
John:
Wow.
John:
You should do some Googling for Activision.
John:
They are actually pretty crazy.