Puppy Game Boy
Marco:
so can you explain something to me john or casey but both of you are sports people compared to me oh god why are the highest end video games called triple a games but in baseball the triple a teams are kind of like the minor leagues it's just uh the same it's the same word used in two different contexts don't try to connect them
John:
that's that's a terrible answer that's not even an answer that's the answer it's like it's like you know like why do we park on the driveway and drive in the park whatever like it's it yes it's the same word and it's spelled the same way so you've got three a's why is it the the people that come when you have a flat tire why is that triple a it's just the same set of letters but it's not the same thing don't get confused about it
Casey:
At work this week, I am learning to use Scala, the programming language, and Akka, which is... Oh, you're learning to pronounce it, too?
John:
Is it Scala, Scala, whatever?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm asking you.
John:
You're the one learning it.
Casey:
Everyone seems to be saying Scala.
Casey:
I'm sure to a New Yorker, it's Scala.
Marco:
I always assumed it was Scala, like scaling, you know?
Marco:
But I mean, I've literally never heard anybody ever mention it, you know, in person.
John:
Verbally.
John:
Yeah, this seems like definitely one of the first things that you should learn about a language is how to say it.
Casey:
It's pronounced Bazel, John.
Casey:
Anyway, so the point is I'm learning Scala, Scala, Scala.
Casey:
And it's weird.
Casey:
It's super weird.
Casey:
And I presume that neither of you two have really touched it.
Marco:
The little bit I've seen makes it very obvious that not only does it look weird, but it seems like only weird people use it.
Marco:
It's one of those esoteric languages like Erlang that all the really out there programmers use, but most people don't.
Casey:
Yeah, it's not as, I don't know, esoteric as my understanding of, say, like Haskell is.
Marco:
Yeah, Haskell's a good example.
Casey:
But, you know, I've seen some go.
Casey:
And although it looks peculiar, I feel like I can get the general gist of what's happening if I look in an arbitrary go program.
Casey:
I feel like even before I could read Objective-C and see through the matrix, if you will, I could at least understand vaguely what was happening in Objective-C.
Casey:
And before I started to really understand Swift, it was very easy to at least generally understand what was happening in a Swift app.
Casey:
This crap is out of control, though.
Casey:
And I think you know how how anyone who's ever written any C++ ever in their lives is broken forever.
Casey:
Well, that and has this like tremendous utter fear of operator overloading.
Casey:
My admittedly ignorant impression of Scala is that it's operator overloading and functional programming.com.
Casey:
gone crazy and so like what was it that we were doing we were doing something that was not Scala itself I think it was something related to ACCA which is like a I don't know it's a weirdo like networking framework that's a terrible summary but we'll just go with it and everything about this is weird
Casey:
Yeah, it's so weird.
Casey:
Well, by overloading operators and doing weirdo functions and the way that you can like, well, encourage functions and the way that you can like leave out crap and that's valid Scala syntax, it's as though you have an entirely different language.
Casey:
Like visually, it looks like an entirely different language, even though it's all completely valid Scala because they went nuts with operator overloading and weirdo like shortcuts and whatnot.
Casey:
It is the most peculiar thing I've ever seen.
Casey:
And beyond that, using IntelliJ as an IDE is a visual assault on my eyeballs.
Casey:
Like, it's a decent IDE, and it does a lot of things, and it's very powerful.
Casey:
But my goodness, it's hideous.
Casey:
It's even worse than the shouty version of Visual Studio that said, File!
John:
Edit!
Casey:
you you know when it was when all the menus were all caps for some reason wait i didn't know about this one was yes yes this is like in 2010 2012 no no no this is like 2010 2012 something like that why i forget exactly when it was but you know the typical windows menu you know the same menu that you have in the mac but it's it's on each window in windows well anyways it was all caps for like one or two generations of visual studio for no good reason so it wasn't file edit view it was file edit view
Casey:
It was like a wrestler shouting at you constantly.
Marco:
Wow.
Casey:
Anyway, so in summary, Scala is super duper weird.
Casey:
And I don't know what to make of it.
Casey:
And I don't think I like it.
Casey:
And I can't tell if that's just because I'm ignorant and I'm still learning it.
Casey:
And I can't see the matrix, if you will, or see through the matrix, I guess.
Casey:
But man, is it weird.
Casey:
And you know what?
Casey:
In summary, I guess this is what being a pro programmer feels like.
John:
oh well if you had been a pro programmer you would have been introduced to all the concepts that you're encountering in the language that you choose to call scala uh they wouldn't be alien to you and you'd just be like oh uh i guess that's just the syntax for that in this language
John:
It's the advantage of hanging out in a multi-paradigm programming languages.
John:
Other languages don't seem that weird.
John:
I mean, everyone's got their own syntax.
John:
The same reason that you felt comfortable with like Go and Swift is because you're like, oh, I've seen structures and classes and methods.
John:
uh and types and inheritance before i've seen all that before i just thought this is just a different syntax for doing that type of stuff and i've seen you know exceptions and case statements and uh you know maybe optionals were a little new but you know one new concept is not too hard for you to uh swallow but if scala has a whole bunch of stuff that you haven't seen before you get the weird syntax also weird syntax for a thing that you haven't even done in a different syntax before that you can like map it to you know
Casey:
Well, and that's the thing is that, you know, as I've said many times in the past, I think Swift is kind of – everyone can look at Swift and see their preferred programming language.
Casey:
You know, I feel like you as a Pro programmer, John, could look at Swift and say, oh, yeah, they totally stole that from us.
Casey:
And Marco, as someone who does whatever you do with PHP, you can look at that and say, oh, yeah, that's how this should have worked in PHP but doesn't.
Casey:
And as a C Sharp developer, and Marco as an Objective-C developer, you know, you can see that stuff in Swift.
Casey:
Whereas in Scala, I can see some of the same stuff.
Casey:
Like, I can see when you do very, I guess, I don't know if rudimentary is the word I'm looking for, but like basic Scala, I can see, oh yeah, Swift took that from Scala.
Casey:
Like optionals, the way optionals work is a great example.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Take it from Scarlet.
John:
You've got to do the family tree.
John:
It's like, for example, there's almost nothing in PHP that didn't come from Pearl or Shell or something else before.
John:
So there's a big family tree of things.
John:
It just depends on, like, this is the first language you encounter this stuff.
John:
Forever you will think, oh, that's from Scarlet, but really it's totally not.
John:
It's like something from Lisp or whatever, you know.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, no, that's totally fair.
Casey:
But you can see what I'm driving at, right, is that basic Scala, where things make sense and it's like written for noobs, that I can understand, right?
Casey:
But then you start getting this crazy crap where, so as an example, Akka, which is again this like...
Casey:
I'm going to summarize it as like a networking client-server framework.
Casey:
That's completely unfair, but I can't come up with a better way to summarize it.
Casey:
So the way you send a message using ACA within Scala is you do either the client or the server.
Casey:
So the line of code would read, for example, server, paren, paren, because server is a function, exclamation point, message.
Okay.
Casey:
So exclamation point has been presumably operator overloaded to send a message that you define on the right-hand side of the line to the destination defined on the left-hand side of the line.
Casey:
I know this is really hard to do verbally.
Casey:
I was going to say, like, source code on podcast is kind of amazing.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
This is not going well for me.
Casey:
But you see, like, it's just imagine it's a function call, an exclamation point, and then a variable.
Casey:
Like, what?
Casey:
What the hell is happening here?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And again, I think a lot of this is probably my problem.
Casey:
And if this makes it in the show, we're going to get all the scowl of people yelling at me about how I just don't know what I'm talking about, which is accurate.
Casey:
But as someone who's new to it, but has been writing code professionally for over a decade and casually for 20 years now.
Casey:
man is it weird and different and i think a lot of this it comes down to almost every programming language i've done looks or i think traces itself back to c and yes on the surface scala does too but i feel like there's the the family tree diverged and took like like hung a right on the way to scala where where most of the other stuff even swift kind of just marched down down the line the way it was supposed to if you will with scare quotes i don't know it's trippy
Marco:
I mean, I think a lot of what you're seeing too is just like languages have certain cultures and communities around them based on their attributes and their existing community.
Marco:
So for instance, like you don't see a lot of cleverness in PHP code that you find online.
Marco:
You're lucky if it works.
Marco:
And the reason why is because PHP is used by people pragmatically for the most part.
Marco:
It's used by people who are at all skill levels, you know, bottom to top.
Marco:
And there's a lot of people on the bottom, of course, because it's an easy language to learn if you're a newbie.
Marco:
So there's a lot of that.
Marco:
And then even the people who are good at using it, they tend to pick PHP because it is pragmatic and it helps them get some kind of job done.
Marco:
And then as you get the languages that become more dynamic and have all sorts of weird little syntax sugar, that's possible with them.
Marco:
I mean, Perl is the king of this, but also, you know, obviously you see this in other languages.
Marco:
Ruby was a big one for a while.
Marco:
And of course, then once you go functional languages, then all bets are off.
Marco:
Functional people are like living on another planet.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
As you get more esoteric and with more clever languages, not only do the languages make a lot of crazy, complex, unreadable, but cool things possible, but also generally way more skilled programmers are the ones who choose to use those languages or people who are language nerds who really love...
Marco:
weird things you can do with these different languages that you that you can't easily or at all do in other languages right so you will see people using an obscure language like scala or or haskell uh in a way that like they're almost showing off what they can do because it's fun because you whatever whatever crazy thing they're doing they enjoy doing that because they can't do that in objective c or php
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
It's weird.
Casey:
And again, none of this is really bad.
Casey:
It's just peculiar.
Casey:
And I think what's frustrating to me is as an experienced developer, by no means an expert, but as an experienced developer, it's very frustrating for me because I feel like I'm not catching on as quickly as I'd like.
Casey:
And I feel like Scala...
Casey:
is not as approachable to someone that happens to have my background as other languages have been.
Casey:
It doesn't make Scala worse or bad or wrong, but it's just, I have not, even objective C, I feel like it was easier for me to pick up than this.
Casey:
And it's just, it's weird, man.
Casey:
Super weird.
Casey:
In any case, John, tell me what's going on with your earbuds, ear pods, excuse me.
John:
This is on my new iPhone 7 that I was talking about last week.
John:
I've got a new complaint.
John:
I talked about the fat lightning connector last time.
John:
That still annoys me.
John:
But I figured I'd get over that.
John:
But one thing that I was accustomed to with the old headphone jack on my iPhone 6 and all my iPod touches before that and my iPod shuffles before that was that if it was playing audio and I put the earbuds in my ears and then I plugged in the headphone...
John:
the audio would change to coming out of the headphones and the other thing i took for granted is if i had my headphones plugged in and audio was playing and i hit the little remote thing it would stop the audio from playing or started depending on whether it was stopped or started and these sound like basic functions both of them have failed multiple times today playing audio on my thing and you know i haven't quite gotten to the point where i'm plugging the headphones i just hit play and now it's playing through the speaker for two seconds i plug in the headphones it just keeps playing through the speakers
John:
unplug the headphones plug it back in just keeps playing through the speakers whatever man you know pause the thing plug it in again hit play now it plays through the headphones playing through the headphones uh you know i'm doing dishes my wife says something to me i want to stop the thing so i can hear hit the remote it doesn't stop playing hit the remote again nope not stopping playing hit the remote again nope not stopping playing
John:
it's no good i can't have that you gotta it's gotta do the basics when i plug in the headphones the audio should start coming over the headphones like and i'm i'm assuming this is a software thing so there's hope of it being fixed like i don't think it's i have bad hardware or anything because it fixes itself if i wait a few seconds or plug the thing back in a few times or you know hit play pause and the thing or whatever i don't like it i give it a big thumbs down i hope this goes away in a point update to ios it won't
Casey:
I haven't had this experience, but to be honest, I've only used the Lightning EarPods a handful of times.
Casey:
And they have worked outside of that original software issue that Scott McNulty, is that right?
Casey:
The guy who did Dash?
Casey:
Super nice guy.
Casey:
Anyway, that he had discovered where it would time out and it wouldn't listen to the remote anymore.
Casey:
But that apparently has been fixed.
Casey:
Other than that, I haven't had any problems.
Casey:
Have you, Marco?
Casey:
Have you even really used the EarPods?
Marco:
I haven't used the EarPods at all.
Marco:
The only headphones I've used are either Bluetooth ones for walking or the adapter to the old headphone jack for plain headphones.
Marco:
and and the and i've bluetooth is as mediocre and inconsistent as it always has been uh and the lightning adapter sucks uh it functions but i'm angry every time it functions especially as my phone discharges itself and i have this stupid dongle to keep track of now and it really is kind of a cheap piece of crap that i'm worried is going to snap at any moment uh because the cable is about as thick as a human hair so yeah
Marco:
Other than that, it's fine.
Marco:
So far, with the lack of AirPods being existing yet, the whole story about removing the headphone jack has kind of fallen on its face because it's like, all right, well, we removed the headphone jack and now we have, well, the same mediocrity we had before with some things that got worse.
Yeah.
Marco:
Backblaze.
Marco:
theft, there's all sorts of problems where a cloud backup solution will really save your behind.
Marco:
And Backblaze is the one that you want, because here's how this works.
Marco:
Unlimited, unthrottled uploads.
Marco:
So unlimited disk space really means unlimited here.
Marco:
anything that's connected to your computer physically so it doesn't do network drives but it will do any external drive and any internal drive that external drive can be as big as you want it to be and backblaze will back it up if it is connected to your computer and all this is for the flat price of just five bucks a month per computer
Marco:
So if you have two computers, it's $10 a month.
Marco:
If you have one computer with six terabytes of drives connected to it, that's also, that's $5 a month.
Marco:
It is a great service.
Marco:
I highly recommend you check out Backblaze.
Marco:
Unthrottled upload speeds are also very important here.
Marco:
I had problems with other providers with that.
Marco:
With Backblaze, you don't have to worry about that.
Marco:
It's fast uploads.
Marco:
They can take it as quickly as you're willing to send it.
Marco:
They also have all sorts of restore options from, you know, basic web restore.
Marco:
You can even restore just one file.
Marco:
So if you're somewhere on vacation, you want to get a file off your home computer, you can go to Backblaze and pull it off.
Marco:
Or if disaster strikes, not only can you download things online, but you can have them if you have some ridiculously large amount of files that you need to restore and it's going to take too long to do it online, you can have them mail you a hard drive.
Marco:
And if you can send it back within 30 days, they refund the price of it.
Marco:
So Backblaze is great.
Marco:
It is by far my favorite online backup.
Marco:
It's the one I use personally and have used for years, even before they were a sponsor.
Marco:
And I don't get a discount.
Marco:
I pay for it just like everyone else.
Marco:
I highly recommend Backblaze.
Marco:
Check it out today.
Marco:
Backblaze.com slash ATP for a 15-day free trial.
Marco:
You can see for yourself how good it is.
Marco:
Once again, Backblaze.com slash ATP for the best online cloud backup.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to Backblaze for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Most of the internet has written in to tell us that you can indeed download the Grand Tour.
Marco:
Asterisk.
Casey:
Yeah, that is slightly accurate.
Casey:
So I thought it was pretty obvious, and I did listen back to what we were saying, and I thought it was fairly obvious that, for me anyway, what I was trying to say was, I would like a copy on my computer.
Casey:
I don't want a copy on my phone.
Casey:
I don't want a copy on my iPad.
Casey:
I want a copy on my computer.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
it would be neat if that copy didn't have to fall off the back of a truck.
Casey:
That does not exist.
Casey:
So for all of you that said, you idiots, you could have downloaded Grand Tour.
Casey:
Well, yes, that's true, but it doesn't help Casey.
Casey:
However, being able to download it and keep it in app might have helped John.
Casey:
Because, John, I believe you were saying that you didn't want it to buffer and you wanted to make sure it was full res, etc., etc.
Casey:
So in principle, that would have helped you.
John:
I was looking for it to mostly to say, like, I demand 1080.
John:
Download as much as you have to so that I can start watching it.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
I guess I suppose I could just say download the whole thing first.
John:
But that's, you know, it's going to be when you sit down to watch a thing, especially if it's getting the crappy version.
John:
I don't want to have to say, oh, it's going to be downloaded in 15 minutes.
John:
So come back in 15 minutes.
John:
I want it to buffer up as much as it needs to buffer.
John:
maybe buffer for five minutes or something you know i basically i wanted to say don't give me the stream if you can't give me 1080 if you can't give me 1080 then just keep trickling in the 1080 until you have enough that you think you can start showing it to me in real time maybe that would have to wait 15 minutes or something maybe it would be just as bad i don't know uh anyway i'll i'll try it next time i haven't watched episode two because
John:
I heard all you guys say bad things about it, so I'm motivated to watch it.
Casey:
Yeah, so quick sidebar.
Casey:
We have to bring it up, and I was going to bring it up anyway.
Casey:
Wow, episode two is rough.
Casey:
Did you watch it yet, Marco?
Casey:
No, I haven't yet.
Marco:
I don't want to spoil it.
Marco:
I keep hearing, though, that it is kind of a step backwards in quality.
Marco:
So, yeah.
Casey:
I don't want to spoil anything, but I will just summarize my thoughts by saying our hosts seem to have forgotten that they are not actors.
Marco:
Oh, no.
Casey:
And, yeah.
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, it was bad.
Casey:
It was not good.
Casey:
It's worth seeing.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
Again, no spoilers.
Casey:
I definitely laughed a fair bit.
Casey:
So in that sense, it was successful.
Casey:
But half of that was laughing through the cringing and half of it was true laughter.
Marco:
Would you have laughed if you were watching it alone?
Casey:
I understand the question.
Casey:
I would say yes, but not nearly as emphatically.
Casey:
It's worth your time, but unlike the first episode, I wouldn't rush to watch it.
Casey:
You might even want to wait until the series is off-season, whatever they're calling it.
Casey:
Is it a season now since it's kind of an American show?
Casey:
Anyway, wait until it's over and then go back to episode two.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yikes.
Casey:
Coming back around, we should also mention that breaking news as of a few hours ago, actually, apparently Netflix is allowing you to download stuff onto your devices as well.
Casey:
I didn't look into this very much.
Casey:
I would guess that this is not onto a computer, but just onto a iOS or perhaps Android device.
Casey:
But this never used to be a thing.
Casey:
There was no mechanism for Netflix to be able or for you to be able to download Netflix movies and TV shows and whatnot.
Casey:
Now, apparently you can, which is exciting.
Casey:
There were a few thoughts about the lack of the arms or ears or whatever you'd like to call them on the power brick on the new MacBook Pros.
Casey:
A lot of people thought that this was a deliberate choice because the existing cables—and did we cover this?
Casey:
The existing cable on the prior version with MagSafe, oftentimes when you would bend that cable in order to wrap it around those arms or ears or whatever we're calling them, you would put a pretty extreme bend on the very, very end of that cable, the end that attaches to the power brick.
Casey:
And apparently that was just a tremendous point of failure across a gazillion people's power bricks.
Casey:
And so perhaps the reason they got rid of the little ears is to prevent that from happening.
Casey:
But I agree with you that I don't think that's what it's about.
John:
It wasn't just the part where it comes out of the brick.
John:
A lot of the people's theory was that the ears, you know, even if you were very gentle with that part, merely wrapping it around the little ears that come out, that that bend radius was too sharp for the wire.
John:
And I don't, well, I don't buy this theory for a couple of reasons.
John:
First of all, many people have used those ears for years and not had a problem with it.
John:
If it was actually below the threshold, you feel like there would be many more failures.
John:
Now, I've seen all the failures of the point that it comes out of the brick, and that is just, you know, you're wrapping it too hard or whatever.
John:
But if you are gentle with it and wrap it around the little ears, I feel like it is sustainable.
John:
But either way...
John:
um if people want to wrap it they're gonna wrap it as evidence in in marco's uh video that we'll talk about in the after show you just wrap it around the brick like it's the same radius as the ears i mean i guess maybe maybe it's a little no it's it's i guess it's yeah
John:
maybe it's a little bit broader because the ears were not the same width as the block but either way if people want to wrap that cable they're going to wrap that cable and the people who wrap it tight are going to wrap it tight apple's job is to make an adapter that will withstand what people do to it if you're going to make an adapter that will not make people need to wrap up the cable like the cable magically zips back into it or something by all means do it but if you're going to make an adapter that most people when they pack it in their bag want to wrap the cable around something and
John:
and they've got the square thing that they like to wrap it around you better make that cable so people can wrap it around the square thing without breaking it and i think for the most part they did that with the old adapters yes everybody breaks every cable that they own you know they're it's like sponge cutters which i think we've talked about in the kitchen uh some people are just cable breakers uh they eventually destroy all the cables and other people don't uh and apple's cables need to be more durable and the string relief needs to be more robust and
John:
But in general, I don't think Apple's square power bricks that have existed for many, many years have a reputation as being fatally flawed.
John:
Like, I feel like that is a workable design that they should concentrate on making better instead of, you know, if the idea was these ears cause people to wrap things and therefore the cable breaks.
John:
removing the ears doesn't solve that problem the the cable breakers are still just going to break their cable so i don't think that was the reason if it was i would imagine apple would have cited it at some point but uh and if it was the reason i would say apple your job is to make the cable not break not take away the thing that you think people are going to wrap it around
John:
That's the thing, too.
Marco:
The argument here is – and before I get into this, another kind of argument we heard was that now it isn't just carrying power.
Marco:
Now the cable is a full USB-C 3.1 cable, so it has more wires inside of it.
Marco:
And that's why the new power cable is actually noticeably thicker and less flexible than the old one.
Marco:
And to that, my answer is it didn't need to be necessarily.
Marco:
This is a cable that the vast majority of people using it, the vast majority of the time, are going to use as the power cable to the laptop.
Marco:
It's going to be effectively a dedicated power cable.
Marco:
Most people are not going to be swapping in and out between different cables all the time, between using this cable as a power cable and then unplugging it from the power brick and using it to plug in a hard drive for a few minutes.
Marco:
No, in practice, most people are going to use this cable
John:
as the power cable for its entire useful lifetime and you could solve that the apple way the way they used to solve that is make the end that connects to the brick not a usb-c connector and then you just make it a straight up power connector does not work as a usb connector because only one end is usb-c and the other end is some weird thing the thing they used to do that with is the keyboard remember the old uh apple keyboards that supported the power button the connector that went to the keyboard end had a kink in it and you couldn't put a regular usb in there this is before our time
John:
No, anyway.
John:
Yeah, so it used to be that the power button to turn on your Mac was on the keyboard.
John:
And to support that, to basically support turning on a turned-off computer by pressing a thing on the keyboard, they had a special cable with a special whatever.
John:
And the USB Type-A connector had a little V-shaped...
John:
groove in it and so did the end where it went into the keyboard so if you tried to stick a regular usb type a connector it wouldn't go in because the little rectangle would hit the little triangle shaped divot that was down there and that was your signal that oh i can't just take this cable and use it right this is not a regular usb cable it's a special one so for their power brick and i bet people would have complained about this but they have two options one they could have permanently affixed the end to the power brick like the old one although that has disadvantages too because of that part breaks right and the second is
John:
make it a power only cable with a big thick heavy gauge you know wire for the power and no wires for data have a usbc looking connector on one end and have whatever the hell connector you want to put on the other end but that definitely isn't usbc so there would like basically be a proprietary power cable or whatever uh many many solutions to this it's deciding that the power cable for your laptop like you said has to be
John:
a fully functional USB-C cable that, hey, you can take it off and use it on a hard drive that you want to keep six feet away from your Mac for some reason.
John:
A, I don't even know if that's true.
John:
Marco can try it out and see if it is.
John:
A, I don't even know if that's true.
John:
And B, that's not a useful application if it is true.
John:
Like, that's not a useful thing to do.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
And I feel like to penalize all other mainstream use of this computer for the fraction of people who either want to keep a hard drive six feet away from their computer and occasionally plug it in without having power or...
Marco:
are going to break all their cables all the time like i feel like that's that's not a good trade-off like the solution to some people fray this wire is not well let's make it suck for everybody like no that is not the right solution here the right solution here which apple i think used to be good at doing is like
Marco:
Find a better design if you need to and do the thing that functions best for the most people most of the time.
Marco:
And every defense of this power brick design basically rests on removing the usefulness of it for most people to accommodate some edge cases.
Marco:
And I simply don't agree with that.
Casey:
Yeah, I think you're right.
Casey:
Coming back around to what do you do to prevent this from breaking or what happens if it breaks?
Casey:
One of the advantages of this new power supply, which I don't know if we brought this up last time or not, but a lot of people have said one of the advantages of this new power supply is, hey, let's assume you destroy that cable by whatever mechanism.
Casey:
It doesn't really matter how.
Casey:
It's a regular USB-C cable, so instead of buying a new $80 brick, you can just buy a presumably maybe $10 or $20 or $30 or even $40 USB-C cable, and your brick is still fine.
Casey:
And that's really awesome.
John:
Plus $40 for a USB-C cable?
John:
I hope not.
Marco:
I don't have the faintest idea.
Marco:
Well, but these are high-power USB cables that can carry the much higher wattages of the 13 and 15-inch MacBook Pros compared to the little skinny ones that could maybe charge the MacBook One.
Marco:
So the idea that we can get third-party replacements here, I think for the most part, it's going to be pretty much only Apple making these cables for a long time.
Marco:
It might be forever.
Marco:
The PC industry could decide to go a different direction with these things.
Marco:
We don't know.
Marco:
In all likelihood, it's probably going to be... If this cable breaks, you can either buy one from Amazon that will melt or catch fire or not charge your laptop at full speed.
Marco:
Or you can go and buy apples for $40.
Marco:
That's probably going to be the answer here.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
I think the third party potential as like a counter argument here is kind of made less significant by you can look around the USB-C ecosystem and you can see like all the stuff that's been out for the MacBook One so far, which is now almost two years old.
Marco:
So that's had a while now.
Marco:
It was very clear from the beginning.
Marco:
Yeah, but it's a niche product.
Marco:
Niche, niche, whatever.
Marco:
How do you pronounce that word?
Marco:
Well, not really.
Marco:
So anyway, you can look at the ecosystem of things that have become available for that so far from third parties.
Marco:
And what you basically have is a mess of hubs and port splitters, some of which are okay, most of which are crap.
Marco:
And it's kind of hard to tell which is which.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And then you have a very small number of external batteries and external chargers and third-party charging cables, a very small number of those, most of which are of questionable quality, I would say.
Marco:
So even after two years, the third-party ecosystem for USB-C
Marco:
in the realm of high-powered things like laptops, has barely materialized.
Marco:
And so to assume that anything meaningful will come out for a 15-inch, which needs 85 watts, in the next couple of years, I don't see it being very likely.
Marco:
I think what's more likely is we just lost features, and when things break, we still have to pay Apple for the replacement.
Marco:
We just might have to pay them less money depending on which part or parts broke.
John:
making it removable is a good idea though i like i like the idea it's removable it's much better to be able to buy a replacement cable i just don't care about buying like oh and when you buy a replacement cable it's just the usbc cable it's like marco said a it's not just a usbc cable it's a special one that's a firepower and b just make it proprietary on one end like i'll pay apple the the 20 bucks for a replacement if i'm a wire killer and i kill the thing it's much better than buying an 80 brick right removable cable you know thumbs up everybody likes it
John:
like it was an opportunity to take an existing design and fix some of the things that are wrong with it just like making the iphone 6s less slippery or whatever like you got the bricks i mean you could redesign them entirely and reimagine it and come up something way better but if you don't have the time or budget to do that then just take the one you have and make it a little better and making it removable cable does make it a little bit better
John:
But removing the ears and making it removable, but making it a big, thick USB-C cable that's not easy to wrap.
John:
I mean, that's the other thing people suggested.
John:
Like, look, don't wrap it around anything.
John:
Just disconnect it entirely.
John:
Coil it into a circle with a nice bend radius.
John:
And now you have a circle that's about the same size as the square.
John:
And you just, I don't know, stick them together with a rubber band or something.
John:
And there you go.
John:
I think that is what you should do instead of trying to wrap it around the brick, to be clear.
John:
But people are going to do what they're going to do.
John:
I'm not sure if people are going to take advantage of that.
John:
And that cable, I didn't realize how thick it was until I saw Marco's video.
John:
That's pretty cumbersome.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So the replacement USB-C charge cable that's specifically in the product information noted to be for the MacBook Pros and the MacBook Adorable...
Casey:
The six-foot, two-meter version is $19 from Apple.
Casey:
So when I said $40 earlier, I just had no idea.
Casey:
And the chat room has provided a link.
Casey:
We'll put it in the show notes.
Casey:
It's $20 from Apple.
Casey:
That's, again, two meters.
Casey:
A one-meter or three-foot equivalent cable from Anker is $15.
Casey:
And this one from Anker is specifically noted in the product description to carry up to 100 watts.
Casey:
So it's not terribly expensive to replace these.
Casey:
And it's a heck of a lot less expensive, like I said earlier, than replacing an $80 brick, which is awesome.
Casey:
Additionally, and I think, John, you just alluded to this, you can just disconnect it.
Casey:
And I think part of the reason that I lamented losing the ears was because I wanted some way to wrap up that part of the cable that used to be attached, permanently attached to the brick.
Casey:
And it didn't occur to me when I was talking about it last episode that, oh, I can just pop the darn thing out.
Casey:
And like you said, John, coil it up by whatever mechanism I feel appropriate.
Casey:
And then I don't need those ears anymore at all.
Casey:
So I've been really bummed in principle about the lack of ears.
Casey:
And I am standing down from that.
Casey:
I think that was me not thinking the problem through.
Casey:
I am still a bit bummed by MagSafe.
Casey:
And I know that there's the Belkin or Griffin or whatever it is thing that you can kind of hack MagSafe back in.
Casey:
I don't really care for that.
Casey:
But I understand why it's not MagSafe.
Casey:
I think it was probably the right decision overall, but I am bummed about the loss.
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Marco:
So if you happen to break both pieces of your power adapter, or if you want a second power adapter, it appears that the new one is more expensive than the old one.
Marco:
What a surprise.
Marco:
Is it really?
Casey:
I didn't know that.
Marco:
The old... The 85-watt... Assuming you have a 15-inch.
Marco:
The 85-watt... Actually, it looks like it's true for the 13s as well.
Marco:
The 85-watt MagSafe 2 power adapter, which includes...
Marco:
Not only does it include the MagSafe cable and brick, obviously, but I think it even includes that extension cable, doesn't it?
Marco:
The $10, $19?
Marco:
Anyway, so that is $79.
Marco:
So that's what it was, right?
Marco:
Yeah, $79 for the old adapter, for the old 15-inch.
Casey:
Oh, I'm sorry.
Casey:
I thought you were talking about the new one.
Marco:
My apologies.
Marco:
The new one is $79 just for the brick part.
Marco:
Oh, wow.
Marco:
So if you want to match what you got before, you have to spend another $19 for the USB-C cable and optionally another $19 for the actual three-prong extension cable that used to come with the old one.
John:
I got to check if I ordered that.
John:
When I ordered my adapters for my work thing, I don't know if I took that into account because I ordered a second power brick like for home so I don't have to bring the power brick back and forth.
John:
But I don't know if I ordered the...
Marco:
power cable thing probably not so so actually what we have here is a price hike by either 20 or 40 dollars depending on whether you need the extra long three prong cable or not fun that that's thanks tim yet another accessories price hike add it to the dongles add it to the now two-sided ipad cases keep yeah keep adding it up tim thanks a lot
Casey:
Yeah, and there was some article that flew around.
Casey:
It doesn't matter where it was, but I read somewhere somebody saying, you know, a lot of these things I can justify, like we were just talking about with the MagSafe, you know, the loss of MagSafe.
Casey:
Yeah, it sucks, but I can justify it.
Casey:
And, you know, yeah, losing the year sucks, but you can justify it.
Casey:
But man, these sorts of price hikes...
Casey:
Maybe they're a lot more complex on the inside, and I'm not aware of it, and I'm not giving it due credit.
Casey:
But golly, it's hard for this not to just seem like gouging or nickel and diming for the sake of doing so.
Casey:
When did Apple become Porsche?
Yeah.
Marco:
In many ways, Tim has continued Apple doing things that we think are right.
Marco:
But there are going to be changes on a big scale when the operations guy who's really good at profit and operations takes over the company from the product visionary.
Marco:
And it's not to say that Steve didn't care about profit.
Marco:
He very much would charge outrageous amounts for whatever he felt like because he thought he could.
Marco:
And sometimes it works and sometimes it didn't.
Marco:
But when you have the operations guy take over the company, there are going to be changes like this.
Marco:
It's inevitable.
Marco:
Tim Cook, he means well.
Marco:
I think he means well for the products and for Apple, but he is very much numbers and profit driven.
Marco:
That shows in a lot of things Apple has done in the last five years.
Marco:
It really, really shows.
Marco:
As I mentioned last show, with a lot of Apple changes, you can take the charitable explanation, or you can realize there's also this other side effect, which is Apple makes more money now, or things got more expensive with this progress that we made, or things like that.
Marco:
These kind of changes are inevitable with Tim Cook running the company.
Marco:
it's going to keep happening.
Marco:
We're going to keep seeing things get cut.
Marco:
We're going to see features that get cut.
Marco:
We're going to see accessories that used to be included that now cost money.
Marco:
We're just going to keep seeing this because the way Tim Cook operates is to find profit and extract it.
Marco:
That is what he's really good at, and it's going to keep happening.
Marco:
As long as Tim Cook is the CEO, and I don't have any reason to believe it's going to end anytime soon,
Marco:
as long as tim cook is the ceo of apple it's going to keep going down this path where things are going to get more pared down and more expensive and it's going to somehow result in giving apple more money for the kinds of things that we used to not have to give them that much money for that's just how that's that's what's going to happen it is happening it has been happening and it will continue to happen
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, I don't know.
Casey:
Again, there may be perfectly valid reasons for all these things, but golly, looking from the sidelines, it's hard for me to see what they are.
Casey:
Not everything, but a lot of them.
Marco:
And some of these things do have valid reasons also, but it's really hard to ignore that they...
Marco:
Wow, you know, there are a few justifications for this change, but then also Apple now makes 40 bucks more every time you buy.
Marco:
It's like, yeah, like you have to look at both sides of that.
Marco:
Like it's important to be to at least try to figure out a good reason why they might have done something.
Marco:
But it's also important not to be foolish, you know, to realize like, oh, also they did this for the profit.
Casey:
Yeah, and I think the perfect example to me is that extension cable that goes to the three-prong connector.
Casey:
I don't know how that works in other countries, but here in the States, you have the little receptacle that goes on the power brick, and then it's like this two or three, I guess like a three or four-foot cable that goes into the wall, and it has a ground on it because not all of our plugs need grounds.
Casey:
Yes, I know that's barbaric if you're British, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
British people cannot complain about our plugs.
John:
Their plug is the size of a Buick.
Casey:
Oh, don't even get me started.
Marco:
It's absurd, but it's very safe.
Marco:
We can safely walk around our house at night with bare feet.
Casey:
In any case, the point I'm driving at, though, is that it is hard for me to understand why it is that that $20 cable is no longer included in this $2,000 to $5,000 laptop.
Casey:
It's just hard for me to understand why that could be.
Casey:
Maybe there's a reason.
Marco:
I mean not only does Tim need – does Tim just – is he really good at profitability and increasing that?
Marco:
But look, a lot of Apple's numbers are not doing so well recently.
Marco:
If you look at their earnings, their Wall Street results, their sales figures, they have a lot of pressure on them to increase profitability.
Marco:
And obviously one way you do that is by selling more units.
Marco:
Another way to do it is by making more money from each one.
Marco:
And so the pressure is very strong on Tim Cook personally because that's the kind of thing like if that starts going south for a while, you tend to want to replace the CEO.
Marco:
So the pressure is very strong at the top.
Marco:
to increase those revenue numbers, to increase those margins, to basically combat what's actually happening in the market, which is kind of this general cooling of a lot of the markets that Apple's in, right?
Marco:
You have iPad sales kind of not going great.
Marco:
You have the Mac kind of slowing.
Marco:
You have the iPhone kind of leveling off a little bit.
Marco:
Apple has a lot of pressure on it now to make more money somehow.
Marco:
And it used to be not, you know, not easy in absolute terms, but it used to be easier.
Marco:
They could, well, they just keep selling more of these things.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
Everything's going well.
Marco:
But now with the cooling off of their numbers in the market, there's tons of pressure for them to just increase profitability.
Marco:
So we're seeing the screws tighten all over the plate, all over the product line, the services, all the screws are tightening because they have to keep making more money.
Marco:
and they have they have to do it from any way they can now because otherwise these numbers are going to start maybe getting worse and you know so we're going to keep seeing this there's a reason why like we're going to keep seeing products that give us that that are somehow you know a little bit cheaper to make maybe or at least uh we are include include less without paying extra you know we're not going to see massive increases in like iCloud storage for free or anything like that because like
Marco:
Apple needs more money from us.
Marco:
And that's going to keep happening.
Casey:
Yeah, we'll see.
Casey:
Final bit of follow-up for today.
Casey:
Apple is out of the Wi-Fi business, which we knew.
Casey:
But we had an email from an anonymous employee of a major company that makes products that integrate with Wi-Fi routers.
Casey:
And this individual said, we're sad that Apple is not making Wi-Fi routers anymore because out of all the equipment that we deal with worldwide, the airports had the fewest problems and the two problems that we had seem to have gotten themselves fixed some way, somehow.
Casey:
And that's a pretty glowing recommendation from someone who presumably is in the know.
Casey:
Additionally, J.D.
Casey:
Power & Associates apparently rated Apple's routers as having the highest or best or what have you customer satisfaction rating.
John:
um or if you're tim cook customer sat uh of all available wi-fi routers so whoops well the customer sat thing is kind of funny because there's you know that you've got the endowment effect or whatever the hell it's called when you buy something expensive you're more inclined to say that it's good because you don't want to feel foolish for making the purchase and so apple's routers are very expensive and therefore people who buy them are more likely to say that they're good
John:
um and also it's got the apple brand where even if your wi-fi router is the same or worse than other ones because it's the apple brand and because it looks nice and because it matches your other apple stuff you're also inclined to say that it's better so those two things are working towards it i mean we know empirically performance wise apple's wi-fi routers are not the best you can buy but that's just you know it's it's another another data point for apple to consider is that
John:
They were selling an outdated product that doesn't perform as well as the competition and costs more.
John:
And people were still satisfied with it, essentially, if this is to be believed.
John:
People were willing to do it.
John:
They were willing to pay more money for a less good on paper product that, in my experience, was actually reliable.
John:
So most companies would like to have a product like that.
John:
But Apple, it's not along the critical path for Apple these days.
John:
So, oh, well.
John:
Fair enough.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
We are out of follow-up.
Casey:
And the topic list says that the next thing we need to talk about is Nintendo Switch.
Casey:
So, Marco, do you want to talk about scam apps in the Mac App Store?
Marco:
I'm just kidding.
Marco:
It is the time.
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Casey:
John, tell us about the Nintendo Switch.
John:
Well, I should ask you two.
John:
It's been so long since Nintendo Switch was announced.
John:
Do you guys remember what it is?
John:
Did you watch the video when it came out?
John:
I did.
Marco:
Yeah, it's the Game Boy Puppy, right?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, that's the only reason you know about it.
John:
Because Tiff thinks it looks like a puppy.
John:
Or so do many other people.
Casey:
Yeah, so I don't feel like even though I'm the official summarizer in chief or the chief summarizer in chief, I don't feel like I'm the best person to summarize this because I don't really care for video game consoles.
Casey:
But what I remember from the video was it was pretty people in pretty apartments playing with this thing that could either be a handheld or could be connected to your TV.
Casey:
And it seemed to also facilitate using like two controllers if you're playing by yourself.
Casey:
So you have like one in each hand, or if you had a game that supported it, you could give, you know, one of the controllers to a friend and hold on to the other and get,
Casey:
when when tilted from portrait to landscape i guess they're effectively the same thing and so you could play a two-player game with what is really two halves of one controller and that was pretty cool um and it just i mean it seemed like a very compelling very different and interesting take on a video game console but truth be told i haven't owned a video game console since the original wii and i got that console for all the reasons that all the people who don't play video games got it was because it looked interesting and exciting and different so
Marco:
i don't know marco let me start with you anything you want to add to that and then john why don't you learn us as to what we should think about this i mean so i have a slightly different condition in in that uh my wife tiff does play video game consoles and not frequently but there's usually like one or two great games that she wants to play so badly on each system that we end up buying it anyway and then usually it's just around collecting dust forever and we feel bad about it afterwards and
Marco:
So these systems are in my house.
Marco:
I could play them.
Marco:
Occasionally I have, but it's basically not a part of my life.
Marco:
I'm basically not a gamer.
Marco:
I used to be, and I would like to be still.
Marco:
Same here.
Marco:
But every time the opportunity comes up to play a game...
Marco:
I instead look at my computer.
Marco:
I'm like, well, I could do this instead.
Marco:
And I just I always want to do other things instead.
Marco:
I'm kind of an aspirational gamer.
Marco:
I would like to be a gamer, but in practice, I never choose to be.
John:
You're not counting Desert Golf, I guess, because that's a game and I'm not sure if you know that.
Marco:
I did play that for a while, but I haven't played it recently because... I know, but you did sink a lot of time.
John:
That's usually the way it works with games.
John:
People don't play a game with the exception of people who play MMOs.
John:
People don't play games forever and ever.
John:
A game comes out, they play it for a while, and then they stop.
John:
When Desert Golf came out, you were the most heavily into it of any person I actually know.
Marco:
Well, I was also kind of using it as like Twitter methadone.
John:
Yeah, well, anyway.
John:
Did you see that thing I sent you, by the way, that Desert Golf ends and someone found the end?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, it's almost at the 16-bit int limit, but not quite.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So, basically, the Nintendo Switch looks really interesting to me because...
Marco:
i some of the things about that that i think are appealing are appealing to people like me so things like it you know like the wii it is kind of the casual gaming system it is not like the hardcore you know ps7 vr plus pro like i i don't care about most of that stuff i i know even if i like if i got the ps5 for pro vr i know i would use it like once and i would never use it again so i'm not probably gonna get that unless tearfully wants it for some reason
Marco:
uh so like all like the high-end video game stuff i i tend to shy away from because i just don't i i know i won't use it and i just don't care and all the game people want to play on those systems are all like everyone's shooting each other and calling them racist names and it's just like i don't want that you know that's yeah most of like modern mainstream gaming is really not for me uh for a number of reasons so anyway
Marco:
What I like about the Nintendo approach in general is it tends to focus on just the fun gameplay and the general playability and quality of the games themselves, not just having the most detailed graphics when you're playing an uber-realistic, well, when you're playing an army simulation that its players think is realistic and simulating killing people in the modern world.
Marco:
Yeah, that doesn't do anything for me.
Marco:
racing around a rainbow racetrack shooting turtle shells at my friends and like that's fun like i like that you know that sounds fun and so i like the theory of what nintendo does and maybe what they used to do in practice while i've had very little experience with it and almost all of which was at john's house a couple years ago for for his birthday um playing playing the wii u
Marco:
It seems like Nintendo's recent efforts are so much more complex than they used to be that for somebody like me, it doesn't really pull me in anymore.
Marco:
I would love if I could just go buy a Nintendo system and bring it home and have it be...
Marco:
Just as nice and simple and playable and accessible as their older games were, like in the NES and Super Nintendo era, but just new games, instead of just playing the same old ones over and over again, I would love that.
Marco:
I would gladly go out and pay for that and enjoy it with my family.
Marco:
That would be fun.
Marco:
But in practice, the games now are so complex because they've just had so many years to accumulate crap.
Marco:
So like Mario Kart has like 50 characters now and all these different crazy things happening all over the track.
Marco:
And like it's it's hard for me to even keep up.
Marco:
It's kind of manic.
Marco:
It's kind of like they've advanced even past this my level of casual gaming.
Marco:
So when I see the Switch, well, when I see the promo video of the Switch with all the pretty young people who have nothing to do apparently playing their video games all day.
Marco:
Sorry, young people.
Marco:
When I see that, it looks appealing.
Marco:
It looks like I would love to have this little puppy Game Boy and be able to take the controllers and have two-player local multiplayer anywhere I take this.
Marco:
That's awesome.
Marco:
Like, little two-player... That is so great to have two-player local multiplayer in a portable like this.
Marco:
That's fantastic.
Marco:
I hope they really do well with that.
Marco:
And I hope they really use it.
Marco:
But if I look at the games they've made recently, it's all stuff that I think I will like unless I try it.
Marco:
And then I realize, oh, this... Yeah, I don't... I don't know.
Marco:
This is too much for me.
Marco:
I don't care for this.
Marco:
So it's the kind of thing where...
Marco:
In theory, I might really enjoy this thing, but in practice, I probably won't.
Marco:
So, John, what do you think?
John:
Well, I am a console gamer, and I do like gaming consoles, and I've had a whole bunch of them.
John:
What have I had?
John:
I have in my house now the PS3, 4, and 4 Pro, and the Nintendo 64 GameCube Switch.
John:
Wii, Wii U... Did I skip one?
John:
Anyway, I got a bunch of different consoles.
John:
No Microsoft ones, sorry.
John:
And when the Wii came out, I was disappointed that Nintendo had given up the race for console power.
John:
They were no longer pursuing that.
John:
They were content to produce a console...
John:
That was basically previous generation hardware.
John:
And I was disappointed in that because I knew what that would mean for the games that are produced.
John:
And I knew what it would mean for the software support.
John:
And it eventually did like very quickly.
John:
Games would be out for PlayStation 3, Xbox 360, and PC.
John:
That was a list of supported platforms you would see all the time on games.
John:
The most popular games were out for those platforms.
John:
The best sellers, the AAA games, as they called them.
John:
PlayStation 3.
John:
Xbox 360 PC.
John:
Never a Wii port.
John:
If there was a Wii port, in the rare case, it looked terrible, it played terrible, it had disadvantages, because you just can't make a cross-platform game targeting three platforms that are sort of on the same level, and then one platform that is an entire generation behind.
John:
That didn't end up hurting the Wii because the Wii appealed to all the cases of the world who were like, I want to waggle a remote around and bowl too.
John:
And it was fun, right?
John:
And it was cool and interesting and got tons more people to buy Nintendo console and buy Nintendo console games and play them and have a good time.
John:
And so the Wii was a success as a product.
John:
But for me, who was just a plain old boring console gamer of the old stripe, not of the new I'm going to bowl in my living room stripe, but the old style...
John:
it was interesting um i like mostly like the fact that i could play gamecube games on it still because it was nice to have backward compatibility which you know didn't get on the the ps3 or whatever um
John:
And I enjoyed those games, too.
John:
And I enjoyed the Nintendo exclusive games as the first party games, as I always do, because they were all very good.
John:
You know, Nintendo does a good job with that software.
John:
They're not too complex for me.
John:
So I was I liked the expansion of those games into the new platform.
John:
Although I did play Zelda on the GameCube instead of the Wii on purpose because the controls are better on the GameCube one than than on the Wii version.
John:
um but i give that one a pass because like all right well if you have to do this if it's going to be a successful product i rather nintendo have a successful product than an unsuccessful one because i want them to be successful so they continue making the games i like and i did like the games that they made
John:
um the wii u was a similar thing previous generation hardware right so there it's better than the wii but there's still basically one entire generation behind if you want to measure it in terms of performance wasn't going to get the ports for all the ps4 and xbox one games which are its supposed contemporaries more or less
John:
So you're still going to see games that were PS4, Xbox One, and PC.
John:
That's all you're going to see.
John:
And it had a novelty factor with the second screen and also supported all the Wii's motion control stuff on top of that.
John:
In fact, there was so many different control options, probably too many.
John:
But it wasn't as successful as the Wii.
John:
People weren't as interested in the novelty this time.
John:
The Wii stuff was interesting to them because they had already seen all that.
John:
And if they had been like Casey, bought it, seen it, played it, and then it goes away.
John:
They want something new, and the new thing of the second screen didn't appeal to them because it was, like Marco said, it seemed more complicated, even more complicated than just using a controller.
John:
You know, the Wii seemed less complicated in that you just stand in front of the TV with a thing that looks like a remote and wave your hands around like an idiot, right?
John:
that but this was now i hold this thing with all these buttons and there's a screen here but there's also a screen there but sometimes they're combined it was too much um the first party games for wii u have been really good nintendo's games are really good i think mario kart 8 is one of the best entries in the mario kart series i don't think it's too manic i think it's about equally manic as the nintendo 64 version that marco probably liked but
John:
I think it's a great entry in the series.
John:
I think almost all of the Nintendo first-party games for Wii U are really good, especially the ones that sort of harken back to the 2D Marios where they're technically 3D, but the freedom of motion is decreased.
John:
So it's a simpler game to get into than a quote-unquote full-fledged Mario like Sunshine or Galaxy or Mario 64.
John:
But it wasn't a success.
John:
The Wii U was not a success.
John:
They stopped manufacturing it, stopped selling it,
John:
way before the normal active lifetime of a console.
John:
So the Wii U is no more.
John:
If you can find it cheap, it is.
John:
If you really can find it cheap, the first-party games for it are absolutely worth playing, and you should get them.
John:
But I would say the Wii U is a failure of a console, almost as much of a failure as the Wii was a success.
John:
And so the successor to that, the hastily-readied successor, because if you're going to can the Wii U, you have to have something to replace it,
John:
is the switch thing and the rumors were for long before even the wii u was canceled that nintendo's next console was going to be some kind of hybrid thing that was both portable and regular and as soon as the rumors came out you're like well for the third time in a row nintendo is not going to try to make a gaming console whose power is comparable to the current generation of consoles which at this point are the like the 0.5 releases so you got the ps4 pro which is
John:
not really the next generation PlayStation.
John:
It's not the PlayStation five, but it's more powerful than the plain old PlayStation four.
John:
And Xbox has that Scorpio thing.
John:
I forget if it has an official name yet.
John:
It's coming out next year or whenever.
John:
That's going to be even more powerful than the Xbox one, but backward compatible, you know, so the other console makers are doing this half generation thing, but either way,
John:
The Switch is not going to be their contemporary in terms of power.
John:
So they're interesting.
John:
It is a hybrid.
John:
If it's hybrid and portable, how can it be?
John:
How can it be comparable in power to something that you plug into the wall and it stays plugged in the whole time that is the size of a lunchbox?
John:
This is small.
John:
It's portable.
John:
The screen is right in it.
John:
It's going to be underpowered.
John:
This thing uses an NVIDIA Tegra processor, which is a mobile thing.
John:
I think it will be more powerful than the Wii U because it would be pretty hard not to be.
John:
But I don't think it's even up to the power level of the PlayStation 4.
John:
What does that mean?
John:
For the third generation, there will be games that are available for PlayStation 4 and PlayStation 4 Pro, for Xbox One and the Scorpio thing, for PC.
John:
And you won't see the Nintendo Switch on that list, right?
John:
So it will continue to operate in the world where...
John:
it doesn't get the first the the triple a titles from the big third-party vendors the multi-platform big titles are in general not going to be in all of them if they are and it's going to be a cut down version well but isn't that kind of like a feature not a bug like to me it's like you know if you want to have like you know call of desensitized violence 17 like is that really the kind of game that you want to play on a switch i i think your view of the the console game world is very narrow compared to the actuality of it
John:
For example, I would say one of the games that if Tiff hasn't already played, I think she will enjoy is Uncharted 4, which is very, very far from that have a bunch of 12 year olds call you racist names while you shoot people with realistic military guns stereotype that you are putting in, even though it is a multimillion dollar AAA game with huge budgets.
John:
It's not cross-platform in this case.
John:
It's a platform exclusive.
John:
We might actually have that.
Marco:
Which game came in the bundle that we bought the PS4 with so that TIFF could play Fallout?
John:
You probably have Uncharted 4, but if you sit and watch her play through it... I think it's still in the wrapping.
John:
If she decides to play through it and you watch her play through it, I think you'll be thoroughly convinced that despite...
John:
having the trappings of you know in movie parlance a big budget movie it's got all it costs a lot of money to make it's got super realistic graphics everything you know like it's that type of game exactly that type but i think content wise is not what you expect it to be and that's not even going into considering the games that are in genres that you're not even thinking about and weird japanese things that are
John:
you know like anyway i think is much more diverse than you think it's but no for someone who is a real-time follow-up atp tipster who knows everything apparently he says that i have the collection not for one two and three oh well anyway all the games i'm getting a rumor about my own game collection from atp tipster which is probably correct you should look at you i don't know what bundle you bought i haven't been to your house to see which thing you have but there's much more variety there but either way i like
John:
to have available to me the menu of the best games.
John:
And I don't play war games either.
John:
I don't play any realistic shooters.
John:
I don't play any military shooters.
John:
I also don't play any sports games.
John:
And, you know, like I have genres that I like too, but I would prefer to have the menu of all the big, important cross-platform games, which is one of the reasons I have a PlayStation.
John:
Also, as I brought this up many times...
John:
power console power you know computing power is not just like oh i'm just going to make them look prettier and it's totally pointless and i wish they would concentrate on the gameplay more power gives the ability to make different types of games you can there are gameplay advances that are only possible due to due to power 3d is one of them if you don't if you if you kept making 2d hardware and just let it control more and more sprites you never get mario 64
John:
If you never crank up the computing power and, you know, programmable shaders and everything, you don't get a game that looks like Eco or Shadow of the Colossus.
John:
If you can't do large crowds, you don't get Dead Rising.
John:
Like, it affects gameplay.
John:
And like making things thinner, you're like, well, do I need something that's incrementally more powerful?
John:
It's not that big of a deal.
John:
Well, who do I care if I can get, like, slightly bigger crowds or slightly longer draw distance?
John:
If you opt out of that or are always lagging behind...
John:
you won't be you won't be able to make that next leap like so nintendo is always one behind on what they can do i always at this point um you know as we were talking about in the last show some people have been fantasizing about what it would be like if uh clone makers could make max because like boy if someone you know if someone was willing and able to make
John:
like the mac of your dreams with the features that you want or whatever and apple will let them do it for many years now basically since the introduction of the wii i've been thinking about can you imagine what a zelda game would be like in the ps4 pro can you you know same developers like it made by nintendo because they know how to make great zelda games that i enjoy people who like zelda games they you know right but having available to them the console power and it used to be well you can't do that because nintendo makes its games in harmony with the control schemes
John:
Which is still true, but at this point, if they're always going to lie behind hardware, it's like I'm almost willing to sacrifice some of their control innovation.
John:
Especially after something like the Wii U, where their control innovation didn't really work out that way.
John:
Like, Star Fox on the Wii U?
John:
That's an interesting control scheme, but I'm not sure it makes Star Fox better.
John:
And even on the Wii, for traditional types of games like Zelda, I prefer to play it on the GameCube.
John:
uh although skyward sword obviously was a thing that would only work on the wii and i'm glad i played that game even though it has some issues um anyway so the switch not pursuing that in exchange for not pursuing it it has more than the wii u does the wii u did not pursue power did not have a novelty to get people to buy it um
John:
But it didn't have anything.
John:
The only thing it had to offer was, hey, you've got a second screen and there's these lots of different control screens, which I think was interesting, but ultimately wasn't enough.
John:
The Switch has something to offer, which, like you said, Marco, is you can take it away from your TV and carry it with you.
John:
Like, that is a pretty big selling point.
John:
And if Nintendo is going to opt out of the console war, as they, you know, the console power war, basically to be in their own market, like, we are not selling a thing that's the same as the Xbox and the PlayStation.
John:
We're selling a different thing.
John:
And you can tell it's different.
John:
Because you can't pick those up and walk away with them.
John:
They don't have a screen on them, right?
John:
It is a different thing.
John:
And so then you don't have an expectation that a multi-platform game is going to be on all of them.
John:
And now the question is, do they find a place in the gaming market where they can fit that is not competing with Microsoft and Sony over there making the consoles, not competing with the PC gamers, also not competing for the phone and tablet games?
John:
Is there a place somewhere that's not one of those places that's making games...
John:
that you can use portably but also on your tv but aren't console games and aren't fancy like pc games but also aren't casual like mobile games it's a strange place and i think i think the switch has the ability to potentially carve out uh that appeal and i think actually the thing that gives it the power to find a market is both that it has an advantage to the customers can see but also because it's less powerful and this was true of the wii u and the wii and it wasn't enough to save them but because it's less powerful
John:
there is the potential to attract games that are i don't know if there's a word for it but like not triple a but how about double a games or just a games basically games made on a much smaller budget because the assets will be you know fewer polygons lower resolution textures like it's still there's still high definition right but in theory so the theory goes you can make a game more cheaply for the switch than you can for the playstation 4 or the xbox one
John:
because there is lower fidelity and lower cost to art and the assets and all that other stuff.
John:
And so if there's an interesting game idea that can never get the multi-million dollar budget behind it, maybe that will appear on the Switch.
John:
Why wouldn't that game appear on iOS?
John:
Maybe it would, and that's bad for Nintendo, but maybe also it's the type of game that...
John:
really uh expects a traditional controller and you can't put a game on ios that demands the controller and apparently you can do it on apple tv now but no one cares because no one games on apple tv and you know honestly nintendo switch gonna is gonna probably be more powerful and more capable and a much better gaming system than the apple tv or any other tv connected box um so
John:
I'm not optimistic about the Switch's chances, but I'm not as pessimistic as I was about the Wii U. If Nintendo was going to do anything, it was either come back and try to compete with Microsoft and Sony, and they're not doing that, and then, to be clear, that would be very dangerous and difficult, and I kind of understand why they didn't do it,
John:
Or find a new market, and this is their attempt to find a new market, and just staring at it, like, it's not up to me what I think of it, and it's not up to Marco what he thinks of it, it's en masse, like, you know, you have to see, is this a thing that people, yeah, yeah, right, it really is, though, is this a thing that people want to buy, right, because people already have, they can already play desert golf, they can already play Angry Birds on their phones, right, and they already have those other consoles, and they already have PCs.
John:
is you know is nintendo slowly becoming the company that sells products only to people who want to play first party in nintendo games and if so is that a viable business and if it's a viable business is it a viable business that supports the creation of hardware or will they inevitably end up
John:
merely being a game developer for other people's hardware which no one wants to see happen but as the nintendo that we knew seems to be fading from view and as nintendo is forced to i'm not going to say pimp out its properties but forced to expand its intellectual property into new realms by you know making mobile games like mario run and having and pokemon go by teaming up with universal to make a theme park doing things that it previously hadn't done because look they have very valuable intellectual property and if you want to make some money
John:
you can make money by giving universal your characters and having them making the theme park you can make money by making a mobile version of mario because it's going to sell a lot of copies just based on the name um but as they do that the nintendo that was the nintendo that made mario 64 and the controller uh and that whole console you know to to usher in a new age of 3d gaming all the piece hardware and software uh you know and gameplay all together
John:
that one is fading from view and it makes me just think more and more about the idea of Nintendo making a Zelda game for PS4 and stop selling its own hardware entirely.
John:
Like if they keep trying, you know, if they had one success and one failure, the third one will kind of be the tiebreaker.
John:
If they didn't do it with this one, what's the next generation move?
John:
Is the next generation to say no more hardware entirely or do they go back to fighting with Microsoft and Nintendo with real full power consoles or has that ship sailed?
John:
uh i don't know um but anyway i'm buying a nintendo switch because i want to play the next mario and zelda game as i always do and whatever other weird game surprises me because there's always one for each nintendo platform and when i buy a console and play only two or three games on it i don't feel bad or guilty i feel like it's money well spent because you know that's the amount of time i have to invest and i'm totally willing to to buy a con in fact i've bought two consoles now two playstation 4 consoles and
John:
The vast majority of which have been playing a single game, Destiny, only did play Uncharted 4 and a few other things on it.
John:
And I'm fine with that, but it doesn't really matter.
John:
I'm not the customer Apple is going for, and neither is Marco.
John:
I think Nintendo continues to go for Casey, which is someone who's not really into games.
John:
but maybe they'll buy this thing just because it looks cool um and and we'll see we'll see what the the sales numbers look like we'll see what the third-party software support looks like because the third-party software support for the wii u just basically disappeared after everyone realized that no one was buying them and you can't port your existing titles and it's not worth making a custom title because there's not enough of them out in the wild and no one knows what to do with that controller anyway so
Marco:
I'm not buying one of these.
Marco:
Doesn't Nintendo, I mean, John, you know better than I do, doesn't Nintendo still do well in portables?
John:
That's something I don't know because I haven't been following this closely.
John:
The question is, do they continue to sell the 3DS?
John:
Or do they not?
John:
A lot of the stories I see about the Switch is like, oh, this is great because Nintendo, being a small company, had difficulty making software.
John:
Like, for example, for the Wii U, it was a long wait between first-party titles and third parties were not filling the gap.
John:
And if Nintendo didn't have to spend some of its resources making 3DS games and some of its resources making Wii U games, and instead they had teams just making games for their one and only platform that happens to be portable as well as television-connected, won't that solve that problem?
John:
But on the other hand...
John:
I, you know, I haven't seen any official announcement that they're going to stop selling the 2DS and 3DS.
John:
And those are still lower powered devices that are going to get way better battery life than this thing.
John:
And, you know, so as far as I've been able to determine, I admit that I have not been following this closely.
John:
I'm sure we'll get follow up about it.
John:
I think they're going to sell the Switch and continue to sell the 3DS.
John:
um at least for some period of time so i don't i don't see that they're going to get the big win where it's like concentrate everything on just this one console in theory they could in theory they could say this is it from now on is nintendo switch and all other console lines will fade out and we will put all our wood behind this one arrow um
John:
but you know i i don't i'm not sure that's advisable at this point and and you know what if this switch is a dud and you are fading out on the the 3ds then what have you even got left so i don't think that's going to happen i haven't read about it happening and if it is someone will send us an email
Marco:
Well, maybe this is the hedge, right?
Marco:
Maybe right now they plan to launch the Switch, keep 3DS around as kind of like a fallback plan, and then if the Switch does well, then you basically replace the 3DS.
Marco:
Then you discontinue the 3DS and move everybody over to the Switch.
Marco:
To me, if you look at what Nintendo is good at, where they succeed, and if you look at what holes exist in the marketplace today, I think you're right.
Marco:
It is worth questioning, does a hole exist for a portable system that isn't a tablet, sort of, that also is not a 3DS and that also is not an Xbox or PS4?
Marco:
And I think the answer there is maybe, because...
Marco:
The tablet gaming has basically shown that a whole lot of people want something approximately that size to play games on, either for themselves or for their kids.
Marco:
And actual computing tablets of what we think of today, basically iPads and occasionally cheap Amazon Android tablets that somehow cost less than a cable from Apple, they used to be really good for gaming.
Marco:
Well, the Amazon ones kind of never were, but the Apple ones used to be good for gaming.
Marco:
Until App Store Economics kind of ruined iOS games on a pretty grand scale.
Marco:
And it's to the point now where it is very, very hard to find games that I want my kid to play on iOS that aren't full of ads or in-app purchase garbage.
Marco:
And I'm willing to pay, but it doesn't matter because it's not even an option anymore.
Marco:
So basically...
Marco:
I can see a potential market here where this is the system that you buy either for yourself or for your kids if you slash they want a really good portable gaming experience.
Marco:
Because console games, that's kind of like desktop computers.
Marco:
That's the high end of the market.
Marco:
You're going to have the real enthusiasts going to the big TV connected consoles and that's fine.
Marco:
But I think almost everyone else just wants a handheld thing, and I think tablets have proven that.
Marco:
The 3DS, obviously, as far as I know, the great success that line has had also helps to prove this.
Marco:
But basically, people want handheld gaming now, for the most part.
Marco:
Most people want that.
Marco:
But it's really hard to get good quality games on the App Store and on the Play Store and whatever Amazon's garbage store is named.
Marco:
And so the way console markets are set up, the way Nintendo would be set up for this...
Marco:
you could actually have good games because you could actually charge like 40, 50 bucks for them.
Marco:
And it wouldn't be a market where when you release a game two weeks later, a billion people have cloned your game and it's all, and it's stealing all your sales for free because that isn't even how console licensing works.
Marco:
Like people can't even do things that quickly and you can't get to market that quickly.
Marco:
And like, so the way consoles are set up,
Marco:
is more amenable, I guess, or more facilitating of higher quality games.
Marco:
And they don't have to rely on gambling mechanics.
Marco:
They don't have to rely on tricks and psychology to get you to pay for in-app purchases over and over again.
Marco:
It isn't that kind of game.
Marco:
It's a much higher quality experience.
Marco:
And so if...
Marco:
People want good games in handheld systems.
Marco:
Nintendo, I think, has a pretty good shot with this.
Marco:
And ultimately, I think people do want that.
Marco:
And I think the tablet world and the mobile world have largely failed that in recent years as the economics have gotten so brutal that everyone is forced to make really crappy games for the most part.
Casey:
I don't really see how this could ever really work.
Casey:
And the reason is that... So we talk a lot, if not the three of us, then our industry talks a lot about how the PC, as we think of it, is going away.
Casey:
Not just a Windows machine.
Casey:
Any sort of computer that sits on a desktop is going away.
Casey:
The three of us don't want that to happen, and it probably won't ever truly happen.
Casey:
But for an average consumer...
Casey:
the desktop is going away, and even the laptop.
Casey:
I mean, Aaron has a MacBook Air that, yes, has had water spilled on it, but is running right now.
Casey:
And she barely uses it compared to her phone.
Casey:
And that's just one data point, but I think that's one of many that are similar.
Casey:
And if we treat the traditional consoles of, like, the PlayStations and the Xboxes of the world as, you know, the PCs, or perhaps even like... The PC is the PC of gaming, you know?
Casey:
like you keep mentioning the markers have the same thing oh the high end of gaming is consoles all the pc gamers are just rolling their eyes but anyway continue no that's a fair point that's a fair point yeah i forgot about pc gamers well that i'm not even gonna go there but let's just take that as an aside because it's going to ruin my whole point here
Casey:
The point I'm driving at is, you know, the super hardcore will perhaps have a PC game.
Casey:
The reasonably hardcore will have like an Xbox or PlayStation.
Casey:
Everyone else will probably have their phones and their tablets, probably their phones.
Casey:
I don't feel like I understand that.
Casey:
Yes, this is unique and it's a different spot than either a phone or a PC or a traditional console.
Casey:
But there's no freaking way that this is going to work.
Casey:
I mean, how well is the Surface Book really working?
Casey:
I don't think it's working that well, and I feel like the Switch is like the Surface book, or the Surface in general, of the video gaming industry.
Casey:
And I will give you guys a chance to refute that, but another thing I wanted to ask, I guess John more than anyone, or maybe Marco, since this used to be your bag, how do we feel Sega has done since they abandoned hardware and are now doing only... That's always the cautionary tale, that everyone says, no, Nintendo, don't do that, because just look at Sega, but...
Marco:
i don't you know sega did not have the kind of ip and talent that uh nintendo has sega had one good successful system that was well timed and well planned on the market it was the genesis yeah every other sega hardware release had some kind of massive flaw whether it was bad market timing a weird architecture too much complexity too expensive like every literally every other sega platform had
Marco:
They all... Yes, even your beloved Dreamcast, Dreamcast people.
Marco:
Like, that was bad market timing.
Marco:
Like, it was... Everything that Sega... Every piece of hardware Sega ever released was badly timed or had some other major flaw that held it back from succeeding except the Genesis.
Marco:
That was the only time that ever worked.
Marco:
So, I really... I don't consider Sega a great example because...
John:
they like it's almost like they just kind of lucked out with the genesis and that kind of fueled them the rest of the way but everything else they did was like ham-fisted and wrong yeah i see i see which point is like if if you ditch hardware what makes you think you're not going to end up like the next sega because they regardless of how good their hardware was eventually they stopped making it because like basically consolidation and they were the weakest player and you know so on and so forth
John:
when they became software only because sega made good games you know dreamcast had really good games which is one of the reasons people will always say that it was a good console even though it totally wasn't because the controller was gross uh but they've made lots of good games and even you know for super monkey ball even for nintendo's consoles like it's not like they they lost the ability to make good software uh
John:
um it's just that they they're a pale shadow of what they want when they were one of the platforms it was like you're in there you're in the race you're you know even if you're in third place or whatever you're you're in the mix right and when you're just a software maker you live and die based on your software things and it becomes more like a hit driven business and
John:
They just didn't have the solid sort of... It's like the Star Wars franchise.
John:
It would take a lot to screw that up.
John:
You could make three, just hypothetically, three excrucible movies.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And still, the Star Wars brand is very strong and is worth a lot of money, right?
John:
Sega and Nintendo has Mario, has Zelda, has Metroid, has so many franchises, so many franchises that have enough great games and enough goodwill and enough consistency in the games, even though there's a stinker every once in a while like Other M, Metroid, which really was outsourced to, who was it, Team Ninja?
John:
Anyway, so many franchises to lean on that if they just cranked on those as a software-only vendor...
John:
They could last for a long time just making the next good 3D Mario game, the next Zelda game, the next Metroid game, the next Pokemon game, the next Smash Brothers game.
John:
Like, they have just so much intellectual property.
John:
Whereas Sega, well, they tried making the next Sonic game for a long, long time, and just their average went way, way down.
John:
And there are other things, you know, you've got...
John:
because that wasn't really a sonic game i know well you got you got shenmue and you got you know all the the virtual series you all they have lots of franchises too but none of them i played sonic spinball john sonic spinball well they made metroid pinball too you know so there's you know there's a lot of free anyway
John:
i feel like nintendo has a stronger stable and they have more consistency making those games now giving up hardware is a big deal though because that means you're never going to have the ability to do a hardware software synergy on the level of the wii or and wii sports or nintendo 64 and mario 64 like all those things that you could do or i would argue the awesome gamecube controller and all the games that they work with that like
John:
you know you won't be able to do that if you're not a hardware maker so it's a big sacrifice but i think nintendo the reason nintendo won't be another sega is they're better at making games and they have more bankable properties that even if they mess up a few of them the property in the same way that star wars is still bankable a bunch of stinker mario games
John:
are not going to make it so that you know that a nintendo loses the ability to make that and b they're not going to sell so poorly that people will stop buying mario games like because there have been stinker mario games like are ones that people like less than the loved ones and same thing with metroid and all the other franchises and arguably even zelda not stinker but like less less beloved let's say and yet still people clamor for the next one because the average is high enough yeah um now the thing that marco is getting with switch in the app store i was thinking when he was talking about that is that
John:
console games are more apple-like in the old in all senses of the world than the app store because the app store like you said is filled with crap and junk and scams and things they're locked down in 40 bucks and things yeah and things that are you know things that are not like
John:
they're not nice like normally the whole thing was apples like you pay more money for a nicer experience and the app store is the opposite of that you pay less money for a worse experience and consoles games are like you pay more money 60 bucks for a nicer experience it's not festoon with ads and in-app purchases and you know i mean that's creeping into the console world with downloadable content as they call it and microtransactions and stuff like that but in general if you had to compare them which one of these is more like the apple experience it's the one where you pay more for like you said the proprietary you know thing
John:
um but that you get a nicer experience but the switch here's the problem the switch has in terms of trying to tread that middle ground uh first of all even though this is totally not finished hardware the switch is almost certain to be the atari links affordable gaming systems and that battery cannot last a long time as compared to a 3ds because come on that's a big screen it is way more powerful power hungry processor in there this thing is not going to last as long as as a
Marco:
I mean, I don't know how long the 3DS lasts, but it looks like it's basically like a souped-up tablet, right?
Marco:
So if you look at what can an iPad get, especially if you made it a little bit thicker.
Marco:
It is thicker, but it's playing games constantly.
Marco:
Yeah, but I think it wouldn't surprise me if battery life was better than you expect.
John:
Well, anyway, it's got the battery life problem, but the more serious thing is the Switch is... If you're looking for something in between the two... This is not the problem of the Switch.
John:
This is the advantage of the Switch for people like me.
John:
The games that are available on the Switch are...
John:
for the most part going to be full-fledged console games the only difference being is that you can't do anything that couldn't be run in last generation hardware so they keep showing zelda on the switch zelda is not a casual gamer game it is a big sprawling complicated game that probably it would help if you have played other zelda games in the past the people who are waiting for that game the millions of people are going to pay for it
John:
know what they're getting and what they're getting is more complicated than almost any ios game ever been made and i know there are zelda clones for ios but in general tablet games do not have the wherewithal or budgets or uh inclination to be that complicated if only because you can't sell them for 60 bucks right
John:
almost every game on the switch even the simpler ones are more complicated because they can be like they're more like console games than they are like phone or tablet games so you've got this thing that looks like you know saying oh this is this is a better version of tablet gaming but i think there will be very few games that are like you're not going to see cut the rope for the switch for 60 bucks maybe you'll see cut the rope for the switch like literally cut the rope for the switch
John:
From their little downloadable store, which, by the way, Nintendo was terrible at selling things electronically through the downloadable stores.
John:
Maybe you'll see that, but I don't think that that type of thing is going to support this.
John:
This thing is going to play essentially console games, and one of its selling points is, hey...
John:
quote-unquote full-fledged console games on the go and that is totally aimed at the market of people who might buy a console but you know this will be cheaper than them right and you know but are intrigued by this and i don't think it's going to pull people from the tablet and phone gaming world because they just want desert golfing
John:
or Cut the Rope, or Angry Birds, or something that is way simpler, or Flappy Birds, for crying out loud, something that is way simpler than, like, if someone gets Nintendo Switch thinking it's like, you know, the thing, and they see, like, Zelda advertised, and they get Zelda, they're going to be in so far over their head, they're going to be like, whoa, whoa, whoa, it's just, I don't understand even how to make forward progress in this game, and how, it's just, that is too much for them, that is, because that is going to be, that's the experience the Switch is providing, and
John:
That's its appeal to all the customers.
John:
So I still think they're shopping amongst the people who maybe you already have an Xbox and maybe you already have a PlayStation 4, but you're looking for a second console.
John:
Nintendo has been staking out the second console market for three generations now.
John:
OK, you've got your real console.
John:
But wouldn't you like something fun and quirky and has the ability to play the first party properties that you come to know and love?
John:
And in general, Mario Kart is just as fun as you imagined it has always been.
John:
And if you're into Zelda, we have one of those too.
John:
And Mario games are, you know, the plain old Mario platformers are fun.
John:
Like...
John:
That's what I think they're staking out with this.
John:
And the new appeal is you've got one console, but you can't pick that one up and bring it with you.
John:
So if you're a console gamer, buy this one and you can play console games on the go.
John:
And by the way, get a bunch of unique properties.
John:
I have a hard time seeing them pulling people from the app store, even though, as Marco said, the experience is so much better than the app store games where it's just filled with scams and traps and in-app purchases and everything.
Casey:
I don't see how this is going to change Nintendo's fate in any way, shape, or form.
Casey:
And I mean, what was it?
Casey:
The PlayStation Vita, whatever that portable one was.
Casey:
I've seen like three of them in my life.
Casey:
They made like a phone, if memory serves, that had like a quasi-PlayStation branding that played like these video games.
Casey:
I just, I don't know.
Casey:
I admire it.
Casey:
I definitely think it's clever.
Casey:
And I think it's very Nintendo.
Casey:
And I admire it.
Casey:
But I don't see...
Casey:
how this is going to be a blockbuster because it serves a nonexistent market.
Casey:
It's not going to serve the hardcore gamers.
Casey:
It's not going to serve the people who have a pretty darn fine video gaming platform in their pocket.
Casey:
Do they?
Casey:
Yeah, you don't think that an iOS device?
John:
Like the games are crudier and filled with in-app purchases and they're not as sophisticated.
John:
Like one of the things you can do with this type of thing is bring people over who, like say someone who grew up playing phone games and never really considered themselves a gamer.
John:
but buys this thing on a locker because it's popular or it has some traction in the market and finds that, uh, they had never been presented with a more sophisticated game like a Zelda or a full fledged Mario.
John:
And it turns out they actually kind of like that type of game.
John:
This is a smoother slope into it because it will be cheaper than the PlayStation four and the Xbox one, especially the pro versions.
John:
Right.
John:
And it does have a novelty factor and they can carry it around with them and everything.
John:
So there's some hope that you can get new people on board with this.
John:
Um,
John:
like that being being or being a second console you've got one of the other consoles this one is cheaper and interesting in a way that those aren't and you kind of like nintendo games anyway because you remember playing them on your snes or whatever the hell and you just decide to get it like you mentioned this not changing nintendo's fate well through the wii wii u and this thing
John:
Nintendo has had its ups and downs.
John:
Wii is up and the Wii U is down, but it's not going out of business.
John:
They have a lot of money.
John:
They've been on the upswing since even mentioning that they're going to field some of their properties on iOS because people assume they're going to sell a billion copies of that, and they probably will just based on the strength of the IP.
John:
But the strength of that IP, the reason they're going to sell a billion copies of Mario Run or whatever the hell it's called for iOS...
John:
is because people love and recognize mario right and people love and recognize mario because he was a star of a long-running series of games all which were really really good and fun and that means they you know to sustain that you have to continue to make really really good fun things with those properties otherwise they stop being valuable and the switch is the continuation of that does it mean that it's going to reverse the
John:
nintendo's fortunes like what if they just continue along the same as they've been for the entire life of the wii u there's been ups there's been downs profits been up profits been down the company's not going out of business but it's also not growing like gangbusters is that the end of the world is that enough to sustain the company it is probably because the ups and downs even out over the long haul and you continue being the nintendo that you are it's just that nobody likes that no one wants to see nintendo limp along its subsistence levels they want to see it
John:
occasionally be more successful than that they want to see where is the next we coming from where is the next uh platform or game that you know and and arguably pokemon go was a glimpse of them climbing back up but i don't think the switch is going to be a similar type of hit i mean maybe i'm wrong we'll see but if it just merely sustains them like casey said if it's like i don't see the this the nintendo switch changing their fortunes if their fortunes remain the same
John:
then they're basically still okay and we get to you know we get to wait out a generation play some really fun games and see if they have a different idea the next time and that's one of the great things about nintendo people are excited about the playstation 5 and xbox whatever the hell they're gonna stupid name they're gonna give to it that's going to be the generation after this assuming they don't continue to just rev this generation with backup compatible uh more powerful upgrades but with nintendo you never know what the hell they're gonna do
John:
Like, they are more of a wild card.
John:
The Wii and the Wii U and the Switch are way weirder than the Xbox, Xbox 360, Xbox One, PS2, PS3, PS4.
John:
Both in name and in form, and in the games that are available on it, Nintendo is obviously the most interesting player in this field, and so I would never want to see them go away.
John:
And if what it takes is, you know, this is another...
John:
failed experiment but nevertheless the company stays afloat based on you know a partnership with universal studios and selling a billion ios people a fairly cruddy infinite router starring uh your favorite plumber i'm fine with that you know that's the thing though you said that people recognize mario they don't they recognize mario but not your ridiculous pronunciation thereof
Marco:
Just ask Tiff.
Marco:
She'll back me up.
Marco:
She's the only one.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Well, here's to the crazy ones, Nintendo.
Marco:
And thanks to our three sponsors this week, Eero, Backblaze, and MailRoute, and we will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean it.
Casey:
so breaking news actually there's two pieces of breaking news one apparently um pebble has been bought by fitbit which is interesting i guess bought slash scraped up the sidewalk
Marco:
Yeah, that screams aqua hire.
Marco:
They even said in the tweet that the Pebble brand will not continue.
Marco:
They're sunsetting it.
Marco:
Yeah, I think it has long since fallen off the edge of the earth and is well below the horizon now.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
But other breaking news that happened shortly before we started recording, so shortly before that I didn't get a chance to take a look at it, Marco has started vlogging.
Marco:
that's not what i know that's not a vlog i'm kidding i'm kidding i'm kidding bats are bugs oh my goodness but you did post something to youtube i posted something to youtube that's right my youtube account has existed for something like six years or something or longer even and i've posted something like six videos to it in that time uh none of which were anything substantial really uh i got more videos than that on my channel probably yeah
Marco:
So I decided to do a video review of the new MacBook Pro as kind of my testing the waters of being a YouTube person.
Marco:
There are a number of reasons for this.
Marco:
YouTube is a massive place where everyone lives.
Marco:
It is kind of...
Marco:
It's unwise business to ignore such a massive place.
Marco:
I can say the same thing about Facebook, and I don't have a presence there either.
Marco:
And I can say the same thing about Snapchat, and I don't have a presence there either.
Marco:
But I feel like I had to get into one of these things.
Marco:
You can't ignore all of them.
Marco:
You have to have a presence in something.
Marco:
You don't have to do all of them.
Marco:
Just pick at least one.
Marco:
And it was easier for me to turn my office into a video studio than to log into Facebook or figure out what Snapchat is.
Marco:
So that's the one I chose.
Marco:
So I decided to start now in particular because I wanted to review the new MacBook Pro.
Marco:
And I had more thoughts.
Marco:
I talked briefly about it last week.
Marco:
But I had more thoughts about it than would fit or make sense in this podcast.
Marco:
And there are certain things that I wanted to actually show in video or picture form.
Marco:
There are certain like wordings that I wanted to actually write in advance so I wouldn't mess them up and so I'd express myself properly in how I wanted to explain myself.
Marco:
And there were certain like it just it would have felt weird to just monologue here for 15-20 minutes like about even though I do that sometimes accidentally but I try not to do that.
Marco:
Basically, I had some more things to say about it.
Marco:
I wanted to say them somewhere else.
Marco:
It made sense to have some kind of visual component.
Marco:
So my choices were either I could make a video or I could make a blog post.
Marco:
And I don't feel great about the future of blog posts right now.
Marco:
And YouTube is the kind of thing that I've wanted to get into for quite some time.
Marco:
Also, much of my success in business depends on a steady trickle in of new audience growth.
Marco:
And I feel like I have done well with blogging in the past, but not really so much currently.
Marco:
I've done well with podcasting, and I've done well with app things, but I wasn't expanding anywhere.
Marco:
I wasn't getting new people in from anywhere.
Marco:
uh really and a lot of the things i was doing like blogging were kind of like contracting and podcasting is growing but very very slowly and and i feel like it will help all of my other things if i have some place where i can reach a new audience where i can get new people in to the you know marco folio or whatever god please kill me
Marco:
you're gonna hurry up and get a million subscribers so we can uh release our podcast on youtube with a bunch of stupid images in front of it and get millions of views so hurry up and build that channel i have i have thought about ways to do that actually yeah but uh it's probably not gonna happen anytime soon but i i have actually thought about like doing an atp youtube channel because it's not i mean it's some work but it's not like a massive amount of work and you know that but it's pointless work until you have built your youtube audience of a million people so get on that
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So basically, I wanted to have some participation in this massive thing that I know very little about so far.
Marco:
I feel like because of the businesses I'm in, it's almost irresponsible not to know about it.
Marco:
And it is... Again, I ignore Facebook.
Marco:
I ignore a lot of things that I shouldn't ignore.
Marco:
You should ignore Facebook.
Marco:
Yeah, probably.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
and and i also i think also like this also builds on skills i already have i already had almost every almost all the equipment required to make videos i bought a couple but you don't have you would love to buy exactly true i bought a couple like led lights for like 40 bucks and like just like little battery powered ones like so i got like these two lights and then that that was basically all i needed like i
Marco:
I already had everything else.
Marco:
And I already know some things about shooting video.
Marco:
Not much, but I know some things about it.
Marco:
I know a decent amount more about photography, and there's a lot of overlap.
Marco:
And I know about sound recording, and that's part of video.
Marco:
And so I already had a lot of the skills and tool set necessary and kind of the vocabulary necessary to do this.
Marco:
It was way easier to do this than it would have been to figure out Facebook or to spend any time on there and just want to escape.
Marco:
But anyway, I really don't like Facebook.
Marco:
So I decided to do this.
Marco:
And I think, you know, I don't know how much I'm going to do it.
Marco:
But I think if I'm going to invest my time creating reviews of products...
Marco:
uh i think youtube is the better place for that now than my blog it's not necessarily less work it's actually somewhat similar youtube might actually you know it's less in certain ways like you can you can kind of riff somewhat on the uh on the script part of it and so you can save some time on the writing not a lot but some um
Marco:
uh and shooting video you can kind of show a few quick things like with the product in your hand that's faster than shooting a whole bunch of different like perfect photos and editing the photos afterwards to be perfect and getting all the dust specs off the objects and everything like there are some things that are faster than than doing a blog post overall it's going to be a similar amount of work though i think
Marco:
uh and it might even be taking longer who knows but ultimately i think it is it is the best move for my career right now to expand into youtube and also for the type for the format of things i do i realize like i don't even read people's long blog articles anymore about almost anything uh if i'm looking if i'm looking for product reviews i hardly ever read a long form review i almost always just look for look at youtube for a video a
Marco:
if if there's a if those are a big review for like some new product like on the verge or something i will and it has a video at the top i will almost always just watch the video and like maybe skim the article at best depends on the topic though because you'll still read a big giant thing on dp review about the new camera right
John:
uh yes but i buy a new camera like every eight years so that's i'm just saying it really depends on the topic if you only have a casual interest you want the video but if you really want to know if you if you want to find out if the 5d mark 4 like is it worth buying you're going to read the whole dp review thing and seven other giant reviews about it to find out is this you know is it worth buying in a way that the mark 3 wasn't or whatever
Marco:
yeah so anyway for the most part though uh i think i and i think the numbers prove many other people choose to get a lot of this information now in video rather than reading blog posts and there's lots of things about this that are that are obvious downsides to me you know videos are less skimmable they are locked to this proprietary platform for the most part i mean yes you can put a video wherever you want but nobody will see it if it isn't on youtube uh or facebook but anyway i'm
Marco:
I'm sure if I get good on Facebook, I'll just freeboot my videos, so it won't even matter.
Marco:
I will automatically be on Facebook.
Marco:
Again, I don't have incredibly concrete plans yet.
Marco:
I'm going to basically feel around, do some experimentation, and see what I want to be doing here.
Marco:
So far, it's gone surprisingly well.
Marco:
This video took a few days worth of note-taking about what I wanted to say, a day of figuring out the handful of things I had to buy to make this happen well, and
Marco:
And then I shot, edited and posted that video entirely today.
Marco:
So I feel like if I get good enough, it is certainly possible.
Marco:
Obviously, everyone who's ever produced video knows it is very possible for video production to basically eat any amount of time and money that it's given.
Marco:
You can go completely off the deep end and have incredible production values and people do.
Marco:
And that's great.
Marco:
I know that as a mostly one-person team here, I'm not going to have the time or resources or patience to do that.
Marco:
That tends to require a lot more people and time than what I can give to this project.
Marco:
So instead, my goal is going to basically try to be like...
Marco:
finding the right balance of like what i should do and what i don't really have to do to make decent videos about certain things sometimes that people will enjoy and i don't even care that much about money about the videos yet it's more about audience building um i i don't really intend probably ever to run youtube's terrible ads um
Marco:
I might eventually do at the end where they say, this episode is sponsored by Hover or whatever.
Marco:
I might do something like that eventually.
Marco:
But in the early stages, at least, my primary goal here is reaching new people.
Marco:
And so we'll see how this goes.
Casey:
It's all about your brand.
Marco:
Can I tell you everything you did wrong now?
Marco:
Yeah, please do.
Marco:
There's lots... And look...
Marco:
Some of the things I did wrong, I know I did wrong.
Marco:
But it was like, well, I could fix this, but it would require an entire reshoot of this whole segment.
Marco:
We should require resetting up all this stuff.
Marco:
And it's like, I just want to get this done.
Marco:
Because again, I don't want this to be something that blows a huge hole in my schedule every time I want to say something about a MacBook Pro.
Casey:
Before you go through the list of grievances, do you want to, Marco, quickly run through the equipment, both hardware and software, that you use to do this?
Casey:
Because you know you're going to get asked.
Casey:
You might as well just quickly list it if you can.
Marco:
Okay, sure.
Marco:
The camera I'm using doesn't matter.
Marco:
The software I'm using is Final Cut Pro, which barely matters.
Marco:
And I was using some cheapo Neewer, however that brand is pronounced, using their cheapo LED light boxes.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
Yeah, it's fine.
Marco:
And what mic?
Marco:
For the mic, my sound setup is in flux.
Marco:
I used the Rode wireless lavalier mic.
Marco:
It's one of the pair that I bought when Tiff and I snuck into the Starbucks to do top four because they're discreet.
Marco:
I didn't sound very good.
Marco:
I did try.
Marco:
I have a little Sennheiser shotgun mic that I tried mounting on top of the camera and using that instead.
Marco:
But with microphones generally,
Marco:
being close to your mouth is way way more important than having like a really good microphone that's five feet away you know like if you can get any microphone up to your mouth that is generally a better idea than a than a better mic that's far and so the the nicer shotgun mic mounted on the camera still sounded like garbage uh and the the lavalier sounded substantially better
Marco:
It didn't sound good, but I think it might sound good enough.
Marco:
So yeah, we'll see.
Marco:
In the future, I definitely intend to do a little bit more of the B-roll shots.
Marco:
I had very little B-roll because actually I had a bit of a hardware failure on the MacBook halfway through my B-roll shooting, which I had to look into that tomorrow.
Marco:
But
John:
yeah so there's lots of things i would do differently but i just didn't want to spend the time to like have a whole other day or half day of reshoots and and different things so john listen all list all the problems all right so uh keep in mind that i have made zero youtube videos of this kind um all my youtube videos are destiny videos which are awesome but not the same thing um so this is coming entirely from a position of someone who doesn't actually know what it takes to make one of these things but i have watched
John:
a fair number of these videos and just based on watching them this is my advice and you should totally talk to all your youtuber friends to get the real advice um but this is this is the casual stuff um you already mentioned if you're going to do a video review of this kind you need to do the things you can only do in a video review which is pretty much
John:
every time you're talking about anything show it to me every single time not that i don't want to look at your face but and by the way that's the other thing you've done wrong be much younger and much more attractive can you work on that anyway you can't there's nothing you can do about unfortunately but seriously that is like a big big factor so if there's any way you could age backwards and become more attractive that would be awesome anyway um show like not that i don't want to see you talking
John:
but if you're talking about anything you have to show it like that's what you can do in video if you watch another video like watching mkbhd or any other thing 90 of the time you're hearing the person's voice but not seeing them speak because they're you're hearing them talk while their hands manipulate the thing while they zoom in so and it's a pain because you got to do all these stupid setups and have all the different angles and get the figure out a way to get the camera on it and
John:
without breaking your trackpad and like and get all those shots but that's what it is that's what it's all about um and also lengthwise i know you did some script in there but like i think you could have cut this thing in half by saying what you wanted to say in one concise way in like one or two sentences without you it felt more like a podcast where you were talking around the thing
John:
because you know you're being extemporaneous and just coming out like condense you could have got all that same info out in half the amount of time with way more close-up shots and way less of you sitting in front of your cute sleeping dog don't do your videos with a window behind you backlighting is a challenging situation i know you want to show off that you have a cool camera but it seems like a bad deal don't wear entirely black because you disappear into a giant black hole like i know that's your outfit but you got to come up with something that reads well just like you know don't wear stripes and polka dots and other things that you get like
John:
the the crazy pattern thing it does hide the mic well though yeah wake the dog up occasionally because he's cute but if you sleep but if he sleeps the whole time it's boring so it's fun to see him running around and doing stuff um uh and yeah that's basically it like every time you were there trying to show me something on a laptop that you were holding in your hand seven feet from the camera it's like not working so like those those are the main points way more close-up shots of everything fewer shots of you talking uh
John:
Yeah.
John:
Different outfits and condensed.
John:
Definitely could have been half length.
John:
I think you could do the same video over again.
John:
Cut the length in half and put like five times as much close-up shots of products in it.
John:
And that's what you're going for.
Marco:
I completely agree.
Marco:
That's all very good feedback.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
And I totally agree that I could... As I was editing it, I'm like, you know, should I spend another hour to just re-record this whole thing and make it tighter and redo all the segments that I didn't quite do exactly right?
Marco:
Again, it's a matter of – what I have to find is the balance between amount of time I have to put into these things versus what is it worth doing because – You're falling into my trap where you want to get every single point out.
John:
That's what podcasts are for or that's what like 100-page – I know you have all these points.
John:
I know they're there but when I watch a video review, the sense I get is very often –
John:
You've said the simplest and highest level thing that you can say about this without going into any detail.
John:
And you have to do that to get out of the video in a reasonable amount of time, right?
John:
Like they'll have one sentence about the fact that there are no ports except for a thunderbolt on it.
John:
one sentence you're like really you're gonna have one sentence on this major thing i need to talk for 10 minutes about just that it doesn't have any other other kinds of ports on it you don't you can't do that you don't have time like that's the format and again you can make your own format you don't have to do it like everybody else does but when i saw that video it seems like if you're going for
John:
a verge style or mkbhd style or any of those other style if you're going for that type of thing and you want it to be small and punchy you don't get to say a lot about the fact that there are only four thunderbolt ports and there's no mag safe and and one of your things going to be taken by a powerpoint all the little nuance points you have to make you just can't make them because there's no time you've got to have one sentence that you should probably write beforehand that you're going to read while showing close-up footage of the ports that was shot separately
John:
And that's, that's that, that's that format.
John:
If you want to go with the more, uh, the rambly one or like the, the more complicated in depth one, you can do that too.
John:
But then the only videos I've seen that have been successful of that are way more structured where like, yeah, they are 15 minutes long, but there's a structure to them and they go into detail and there's segments and there's things to hang your hat on.
John:
Basically the visual version of, of like H2, H3, you know, like the visual version of indenting on a table of contents, the beginning of my OS 10 phase, um,
John:
You need something like that.
John:
It's as if I wrote an OS X review, but it was just paragraph after paragraph of text with no section headings and no hierarchy at all, right?
Marco:
What you're saying is correct if I want to be like one of these popular vloggers and popular tech YouTubers.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
I'm not sure that's what I want.
Marco:
I'm not sure that I even can do that.
Marco:
I think what I need to find is the balance between who I am and what is popular on YouTube.
Marco:
And I don't think, like, if I just try to be MKBHD, I'm going to fail because I'm not MKBHD.
Marco:
If I try to make a Verge video, I'm going to fail because I'm not spending as much time and resources on it as the Verge is.
John:
But you want the advantages that they have.
John:
You said you don't want it to be that long.
John:
You want it to be more compact.
John:
You want it to be somewhat pre-written.
John:
And you want it to presumably take advantage of the things that are in video.
John:
And also, you want to build an audience.
John:
Yeah.
John:
the things that have been proven to build an audience are those type.
John:
It doesn't mean you have to be that style.
John:
You can pick your own style.
John:
And in fact, you could be the entire opposite style where you make seven hour videos that are going to incredible depth.
John:
I just don't think the audience is that big for that.
John:
You can do whatever you want, but it seems like you're actually very close.
John:
So those types of videos now with this video that you made and the parts where you diverge, if you were to bring them closer, it would also be closer to your desires for this video, which is to do something that you can't do in a podcast and a blog.
John:
You know, to take less time to be more concise, the type of video that you would watch instead of reading the Big Long Verge article.
John:
You haven't quite made that, but you're close.
Marco:
yeah yeah ultimately i i think you're right again it's a matter of finding my natural fit on this continuum somewhere and and i i obviously i don't i didn't expect to find it with my very first video that i've ever made in this kind of capacity or style at all um but i think uh i i think i i it'll take me a while to find that that balance you should have tiff to your wardrobe she would love it she should make you close for if it's a link outfit fit you
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
I'm just spitballing here.
Marco:
If I can figure out the microphone thing, then I'll put on whatever shirt I want.
Marco:
Right now, it's convenient to hide my little crappy black lavalier.
John:
That's your look.
John:
The black thing is your look.
John:
I just think I don't know what you have to do to make that work.
John:
camera wise but it wasn't and i i think the backlight from the window is not helping it's like to make a black completely black outfit a black shirt with a black hoodie to make that read on camera some video person will tell you what you have to do but i don't but you know whatever it is needs to be something i also think you are grossly overestimating how important it is to hide your mic i really don't think anyone cares about the mic
Marco:
Well, if I wanted to not have the mic, I would just bring a podcasting mic over from the boom arm and actually sound good.
Marco:
Well, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
That's different.
Casey:
That's different.
Casey:
I think having something that's occluding the view of you is one thing.
Casey:
Being able to see a lavalier mic that we've seen on every television talk show for 30 years, that's a totally different thing.
John:
But you're not going to be on camera most of the time anyway.
John:
Most of the time it's going to be you talking over other footage that you shot.
John:
It's true.
John:
It's not a question of you being like those other things.
John:
It's a question of what do people want to look at.
John:
And like I said, it would help if you were younger and more attractive.
John:
But in general, no one wants to see someone just sit there and talk.
John:
In a product review, just show me the product the whole freaking time.
John:
Talk by all means.
John:
Talk to me.
John:
Tell me about what you have to see.
John:
But just seeing you talk, that should be the smallest proportion of the video.
John:
And so if during that time we can see a little black mic on your thing, like Casey said, like we've seen that on TV for years and it's fine.
John:
And the audio quality was fine.
John:
Like whatever.
John:
I don't think you need to do anything to make the audio better and not really to make the video.
John:
But like you said, you did it in 1080 instead of like the video looks fine.
John:
Like your shirt didn't read well.
John:
And, you know, it is challenging with the backlight.
John:
But everything about it was fine.
John:
It's just because the MacBook was too far away from the camera.
John:
So anytime you're trying to show me anything, it's like, well, I can't see that.
John:
So forget it.
Marco:
I think what I'd like to do in the future is, again, a lot more B-roll shots.
Marco:
So a lot more of the close-ups and everything of the computer doing things that I'm talking about, things that I'm showing.
Marco:
Again, this was kind of rushed at the end because I was trying to get it all done today.
Marco:
And again, I got to find that part of the balance between...
Marco:
finding out what kind of style of video I want to produce and what content it should be, part of that balance is also fitting it into the rest of my life because I'm also a podcaster and I'm also a software developer and I'm also lazy.
Marco:
And so I have to figure out the schedule of where does this project fit in my life?
Marco:
How much time can I really devote to this?
Marco:
And again, these are all things we have to figure out over time.
Marco:
But overall, I do agree.
Marco:
I think future videos will be like less of just me talking and more of showing the things that I'm talking about.
Marco:
That being said, I was surprised how many responses I got already so far with people pointing out people who noticed that I made very few cuts in the video.
Marco:
that it's mostly just me talking with only a few cuts here and there a lot of people complimented that a lot of people said this is kind of a relief from the more highly produced videos that are cut in like every four seconds like the like because that's you know pro video usually makes tons of cuts like it's like watching a movie trailer just cut cut cut it's just constant right uh and the kind of the more amateur you get i think the less cuts you tend to make and a lot of people actually said they liked that and again it's again this is all going to depend on what
Marco:
What is my style?
Marco:
What are my goals here?
Marco:
What do I want to do?
Marco:
When I say audience growth, I'm not saying I'm going to try to do whatever it takes to get 10 million subscribers or whatever.
Marco:
That would be nice.
Marco:
I don't expect that to happen.
Marco:
I never even had that big of an audience on my blog at its peak.
Marco:
So I wouldn't expect that to happen on YouTube.
Marco:
But I want to find people who are compatible with me.
Marco:
And so to some degree, I do have to kind of come on the terms of the medium and do it, you know, quote, correctly.
Marco:
But also to some degree, I don't want to like totally change who I am for this medium.
Marco:
So like some of the comments also pointed out how they were happy to see me talk about things that other people weren't talking about about this machine.
Marco:
And I think that's kind of because I'm a rambling podcaster who wants to talk about in great detail.
Marco:
And I'm not going to cut out the big, long section about the power brick.
John:
That's why you can do the long sequences without cuts is because you are accustomed to spilling out your thoughts in a long sequence.
John:
That's true.
John:
Without cuts, essentially.
John:
Even in the podcast, like this podcast is edited, but it's not as if...
John:
you're taking any of our soliloquies and chopping it up into a thousand pieces and piecing it together.
John:
That's not how, it's not how it works at all.
John:
I mean, some shows are like that, but the show is not.
John:
Um, so you're used to doing that and whether, uh, the current YouTube stars are used to do that or not.
John:
The fact is they don't like they will, you know,
John:
two sentences about this cut two sentences about this cut two sentences about this and often those cuts are because they're showing you the things but i think they didn't even say those in sequence i think it's they are assembling they are creating their their thing in the editing room for the most part which is yeah you know a perfectly valid way to work but it is not the way this podcast or i think even even something like top four it's not how that works as far as i'm able to tell as a listener um so i think you're coming at it from that perspective and that is a that is a difference that will be apparent to people