Something Has Gone Wrong
Marco:
Not only did we just talk last night, because we're recording this episode a week ahead of time for the holiday break.
Marco:
It was barely yesterday.
Marco:
Not only that, but I've heard you guys in my headphones all day.
Marco:
Because I was editing last night's show fast enough so I can get it published today, because I'm leaving town tomorrow.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So, yeah, that was... So, I basically... It's like I'm just living with you now, which is kind of cool.
Marco:
Lucky you.
Marco:
You're my friend, so it works out well.
Marco:
But, yeah, I certainly have heard a lot of you in the last 24 hours.
Casey:
I'm so sorry.
Casey:
John Craig, Syracuse.
Casey:
I have received 158 friggin' emails today thanks to your tweet.
John:
Yeah, thanks a lot, John.
John:
First of all, I told you both I was going to do this.
Casey:
But you never said that you were going to solicit this feedback via friggin' email.
Casey:
I was hoping it would be via Twitter.
John:
Well, so here, I told you I was going to solicit the feedback.
John:
Marco was like, oh, we can do it five minutes before, but I know you couldn't do it five minutes before.
John:
We've got to collect this stuff.
John:
So what I wanted to do was use this piece of software called BackChannel.
John:
It's like backchan.nl, which I thought was like a domain, and I'll just go to backchan.nl and just use it, right?
John:
The same way you use like SurveyMonkey or the million other...
John:
places where you can go to do some you know single purpose thing with a web app or i would just point people to a weird url and say hey go here and enter your questions and lets people vote the questions up you know what i mean like wait what is this url b-a-c-k-c-h-a-n dot n-l dot n-l but it's not a url like i thought it was a url because i was gonna say because this doesn't work what it is actually is a software project it's a php thing i think and there's no way i was gonna like install a php thing
John:
who would right but anyway what i was looking for is a simple way for people to enter questions and other people to upvote them with some reasonable controls so a google sheet wouldn't do it because then people just put whatever number they want in the votes column and then we have to go back through the history to see who did it and it's all pointless
John:
Reddit would have worked, but we know how I feel about that.
John:
And so I said, well, short notice, I'm just going to tweet it and we'll just use the feedback form, which will provide some semblance of uniformity and that we're hoping most of you will come through that and that people will read all the stuff that says we're going to read your name on the air and blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
And I think it worked out pretty well.
John:
We'll find out how well it worked tomorrow if they followed the very important all caps instruction, which was today only.
John:
Tomorrow, if we get another hundred questions, then, you know, well, my bad.
John:
Right now, go delete that tweet.
John:
I'm telling you.
Marco:
There's no... That's actually a very good idea.
Marco:
People will find it, like, in three weeks and still be telling us things.
Marco:
Today?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
All right.
Casey:
Go delete it.
Marco:
That's the only thing you can do.
Casey:
That is the smartest thing, Marco, I think you've ever said in your entire life.
Casey:
After I want an M5 or you should go with me to pick up my M5.
Marco:
Those are also high on the list.
Marco:
Actually, Tiff just got a new car like an hour ago.
Marco:
Oh, really?
Marco:
Yeah, because the lease was up and we just got the same thing again, the 340 GT.
Casey:
Yeah, but I didn't realize you had actually ordered it.
Casey:
I remember you being in conversation with the dealer, but I didn't know you had pulled the trigger.
Marco:
The best thing about this, I can finally close like four browser tabs.
Casey:
It's the best feeling ever, isn't it?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
Right, John?
John:
Close that whole window.
John:
Yeah, close the whole window with those tabs in it.
Casey:
Hey, in the interest of full disclosure, I did go on a Tacky Light tour tonight.
Casey:
I have had a holiday gathering.
Casey:
I would not say I've had a holiday party.
Casey:
So just letting you know.
Marco:
Good.
Marco:
I have a small holiday get-together on my desk as well.
John:
We'll see how this goes.
John:
It's from Belgium.
John:
I had a glass of water in a dogfish ale glass today.
Casey:
Oh, so you must be hammered.
John:
We were out at a restaurant, and I guess all their cups were Dogfish Head Ale or whatever that company is that Marco likes the beer from.
Marco:
Yep, Dogfish Head.
John:
And I said, oh, I don't know if they sponsor the place or whatever, but yeah, those were their water glasses.
John:
You couldn't have at least gotten a Sprite, John.
John:
And I deleted that tweet, so the world is safe.
Marco:
oh thank you i'm looking at my red badge on mail.app 109 you damn jerk yeah i've i gotta be honest i have read almost none of the questions that came in by email because i've been i i've had such a busy day that i didn't have time to read 150 new emails in addition to what i normally get right we'll get to that portion of the show eventually and i will re-explain it or explain it as the case may be to to both of you in the audience
Casey:
let's get started so let's start with some follow-up a friend of the show ryan jones has uh corroborated what we had theorized uh on the last episode uh he says and i'm quoting airpod lightning port is exactly the same as the iphone port everybody chill well you know the iphone 7 that's shown in this picture comes with the big fat cable that covers over the whole thing just like we discussed last show like the fat one actually does cover it you know for the headphones anyway i guess for the charging thing it doesn't
John:
um i think it's a little bit more noticeable on the airpods because everything is all white shiny plastic and you're plugging a white shiny plastic thing into it and then there's just a little bit poking out on a regular iphone i imagine people haven't noticed this before you know that the little edges poke out past the thing but of course internet being what it is this picture which uh many people have posted similar things didn't stop people they said well you know what that means that means the iphone 7 was supposed to be usb c2 and they changed their mind
John:
So you can't stop the conspiracy theorists.
John:
Anyway, it just looks like this is what lightning ports look like, people.
John:
And sometimes the plastic part doesn't extend all the way to the end of the little opening.
Casey:
Also, I'd like to acknowledge that we finished recording the last episode 26 hours ago, 25 hours ago, something like that.
Casey:
And we did indeed have one piece of follow-up.
John:
Amazing.
John:
Well, they're fast.
John:
I mean, it could have been real-time follow-up if we were a little bit, you know, this was 11, I guess it was 11.44 a.m.
John:
today.
John:
But I'm sure somebody in the chat room said this during the thing and we missed it.
John:
Indeed.
Casey:
All right, moving on.
Casey:
Are we going to talk?
Casey:
I guess, John and Marco, you really want to talk about the Mark Ehrman article, don't you?
John:
So do you.
John:
Everybody does.
John:
Who doesn't?
John:
I slightly do.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let me sit back, get comfortable.
Casey:
Maybe invite over another party.
Casey:
Yeah, right.
Casey:
All right, let's get started.
Casey:
So Mark Ehrman...
Casey:
Wrote a post on Bloomberg, which is obviously where he works now.
Casey:
It's entitled, How Apple Alienated Mac Loyalists.
Casey:
And whether or not you agree with the premise of the article, whether or not you like the article, the premise of the article is...
Casey:
If you look at the situation here, the Mac is kind of an also-ran.
Casey:
It's the tag-along in Apple's portfolio.
Casey:
And it's becoming more and more clear that it's of less importance to Apple than it ever has been in the past.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
There's some interesting factoids, which I'm sure we'll get into, about why the Mac does or does not matter.
Casey:
There's some interesting facts that actually may not be accurate, as told to us by some little birdies, about whether or not the software teams were realigned or misaligned or just generally differently aligned in the effort to make the things for the Mac better or worse.
Casey:
It's an interesting article and it is worth reading.
Casey:
I'm not sure what to make of it, but I'm curious to hear what the two of you have to say.
Casey:
So since I've learned from the last episode, let's start with John.
Casey:
John, what did you think about this?
John:
Yeah, I don't think you have to do it for this particular topic.
John:
Yeah, I think there's only one piece of newish rumor.
John:
I'm not going to say new information, but new information, a new rumor.
John:
That's the only thing, as far as I can recall, having read this thing a couple days ago now that was in here.
John:
And that was the story about how...
John:
the new macbook pros one of the things that apple looked into was having differently shaped batteries to basically find find more places to shove battery in the thing and it doesn't mean the same as the scalped batteries because that wouldn't make sense because it's not it's not tapered but instead of just having a couple rectangles that fit into the nice rectangle parts having more oddly shaped batteries they can fill more nooks and crannies with battery and
John:
And that didn't work out for whatever reason, according to this article.
John:
And so they went with the more boring shape battery, which meant less battery, which meant less battery life.
John:
And that's a new presentation of some new information.
John:
Literally everything else in this article, I think, is just...
John:
A summary and reiteration of all of the cranky Mac user stuff that has been going on the Internet and on this podcast for a long period of time, including the bit that a lot of people I think that was in this article.
John:
A lot of people are going on like that.
John:
Apple was this this article that Apple doesn't have a dedicated Mac voice group anymore.
John:
Yeah, it says that about software, at least, not about hardware.
John:
Right.
John:
And that's unless I'm missing some detail that is not in this article.
John:
And again, it would help if this article acknowledged the thing I'm about to say and clarified it for me.
John:
But Apple unified software under Craig a long time ago.
John:
Like there used to be someone who ran iOS and someone who ran what was then called macOS 10 and then eventually OS 10 and now macOS.
John:
Right.
John:
Those were separate and then they were combined.
John:
Right.
John:
And so it's not that's not news.
John:
Now, if they mean, OK, so that happened.
John:
But now, actually, really, even within the organization, there's not a bifurcation.
John:
I think the article should have acknowledged the past thing and said, now I know what you're thinking.
John:
Didn't they already do that when they put Craig Federighi and tried everything?
John:
No, even then, they were still too separate.
John:
The article doesn't say that.
John:
So.
John:
I don't know quite what to think there, but either way, I don't see that as a big deal because unifying all software and all OS efforts under a single group makes sense to me more than having them be walled off from each other.
John:
Because the core OS is essentially the same plus or minus differences needed for each individual platform.
John:
And there's so much share between them and so many APIs and things that go between them, like the extension mechanism, XPC, and just...
John:
It makes perfect sense to not have them walled off into like this is the iOS group and this is the Mac OS 10 group and occasionally they cooperate.
John:
So I don't see that as particularly newsworthy either.
John:
And I also don't understand what it means that most of the team is iOS first.
John:
I mean, they're working on iOS.
John:
I can imagine there are more people working on it because it is the more important operating system.
John:
It's also the younger one.
John:
And it has the hardware that is changing the most.
John:
But what does it mean to be iOS first?
John:
As if the entire most of them are iOS first?
John:
I don't know.
John:
It's just not enough information to get worked up about.
John:
And so unless there's some other nuance that we're missing here that wasn't included in the article, I'm going to say, yeah, so the groups are combined.
John:
That's fine.
John:
And that's not a big deal.
John:
I'll let Marco say what he thinks about this first.
John:
But there is one reason I wanted to talk about this that is...
John:
doesn't have to do with the specifics of the article except to say that this is a thing now that every publication feels like they need to have a mac malaise article where they talk about either cranky mac users or apple failing those mac users or both and some story about how the mac is fading and stuff like that so that is the season for that kind of article and this was sure one of them
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, I honestly don't have a lot to say about this specific article.
Marco:
I do, obviously, as we all know, have a lot to say about the topic of the state of the Mac and Apple seemingly neglecting things that I care about.
Marco:
But this particular article...
Marco:
as is typical with mark german articles contains a few solid new you know stated facts whether they're true or not we don't know but stated as fact you know a few new information bits uh but then this whole narrative around it that is questionable and and of of a lot less credibility you know german has very good sources for facts um
Marco:
but he often gets the story and the narrative wrong or the reasons wrong.
Marco:
So we have to take everything in this that's about reasons or people's feelings or what they think or why they do things, take all of that with a grain of salt because that could all be completely bogus or at least misleading or missing some kind of subtle distinction or detail.
Marco:
So what we have to work with here, you know, John nailed it.
Marco:
Like, there's not a lot of new stuff here.
Marco:
And the stuff that is new, like that they tried potentially terrorist batteries in 2016 on MacBook Pro.
Marco:
Yeah, that's not that interesting.
Marco:
If they would have crammed more battery into it, it would have been heavier.
Marco:
Batteries are heavy.
Marco:
Empty gaps around the square batteries are very lightweight.
Marco:
So if they would have, like, one of the reasons this laptop is so pleasant to use is that it is noticeably lighter than the previous one.
Marco:
If it was less lighter than the previous one, then it wouldn't be as good of an update.
Marco:
So that's kind of a non-story, that they tried this different kind of battery in it.
Marco:
And, you know,
Marco:
They try lots of things, and there's a reason why not everything ships.
John:
That isn't that important.
John:
That was another one of the stories they had was about the MacBook, that they had a bigger one and a heavier one, and they went with the skinnier one.
John:
But again, the conclusion, they picked the lighter one, and then the engineers had less time to figure out how to cram all the electronics into the thin one.
John:
The idea that the way the company is working is...
John:
try a bunch of different approaches then eventually pick one and then the narrative that this leaves the engineer scrambling to get the final one done like well welcome to apple yeah that approach of trying multiple ideas like i first of all i don't think that's new like look underneath all johnny ives black cloths and his things got tons of you know they try tons of stuff and then eventually you pick one and there's lots of time pressure to do it and so on and so forth but um like again if they're going to make this argument you have to add more it has to be like
John:
This is a thing, you know, in the past they did X and these results were Y and now they're doing Z and the results are Q. Like you need something to tie it together instead of just saying they did this thing and this is what happened.
John:
Is that any different than literally every other piece of hardware they've made in the past 10 years?
John:
Or is it the same?
Yeah.
John:
the article isn't saying one way or the other we're led to believe this is a nefarious terrible thing that two possible approaches to a product were done and one of them didn't work out and they picked one and then it was a it was a difficult task to get that one done in time we're led to believe that that is a sign that i don't know that they don't care about the mac i mean if anything they care about it more because they're doing twice the work and throwing half of it away i don't know this article is so confused
Marco:
Yeah, I feel like I feel like Gurman really he got a few good facts and he really wanted to tell this story.
Marco:
And so he he kind of shoved the facts into the story he wanted to tell.
Marco:
But it doesn't all make good sense.
Marco:
It is not, you know, it isn't it isn't a great fit in some cases.
Marco:
And this honestly, you know, not to pick on Gurman too much, because
Marco:
Pretty much every journalist I've ever had any dealings with has done exactly the same kind of thing.
Marco:
You know, the story is usually decided up front and the facts are found to support it.
Marco:
And, you know, I have my own theory about what the narrative is for the problems that the Mac is having inside of Apple.
Marco:
And a lot of it lines up with this.
Marco:
So, like, I want to agree with this.
Marco:
I want to believe it.
Marco:
But the fact is there's very few facts here to support the story and especially very few new facts.
John:
Yeah, so the larger point I wanted to make about this whole topic, it's something I keep in mind every time we discuss it, and in general, is, and I think I brought it up before, imagine for a second that...
John:
We fast forward 20 years and look back and realize that what's actually happening during this period is that PC and desktop computing is slowly fading away as a thing.
John:
If you are a fan of that type of thing, as we are, during the time when it was fading away...
John:
I'm not sure it would feel any differently than we feel about Apple doing this stuff now.
John:
Can we tell the difference between Apple not prioritizing the Mac and that being the wrong thing to do?
John:
and us us being you know indignant and angry and telling apple you should be doing this but you're doing that instead and you're making a mistake and it's really important for you to do this for all these reasons you know so on and so forth kind of like why apple should have a mac pro which i wrote a thing about and so did marco more recently and you know what what the needs of pro users are to whatever um it
John:
i don't think it would feel any different from our perspective if we're right or if we're wrong like it feels the same either way and uh and i keep that in mind because it's like i mean it doesn't really change how i feel i still wish they would pay more attention to the mac but every once in a while i have a moment of clarity and say well say apple is doing exactly the right thing and we are yelling and screaming and trying to tell them to do the wrong thing
John:
uh i know it's difficult for me to like to distinguish those two scenarios now i mostly disagree that they are doing the right thing i think they're doing the wrong thing but setting that aside for a second the other part i take uh you know that thought experiment leave it over there and then say okay
John:
Let's say Apple is right, and this is a technology, a product, and a style of working and everything that is fading from view.
John:
It will die with us because we are the last group of people who are ever going to care about this crap, and actually the right thing for Apple to do is to get rid of it.
John:
In that case, I still have one more thing left to complain to Apple about, and that's...
John:
If they really believe that, they should be honest about it.
John:
They should hasten the transition.
John:
They shouldn't string us along with a series of platitudes like we talked about last time.
John:
Like, we've got great desktops, and the iMac is the best desktop, and we're really dedicated to the Mac, and we love the Mac.
John:
And I think it's complicated by the fact that Apple doesn't speak with one voice, especially after Jobs is gone.
John:
It's a company made up of a bunch of people.
John:
And I think there are people inside Apple, probably Phil Schiller, probably even Craig Federighi, who feel the same way about the Mac as we do, only they're inside the company, right?
John:
So when they make statements like, oh, we think the Mac is really important and we're really dedicated to the Mac and blah, blah, blah.
John:
I think that's the truth.
John:
Then they believe it, right?
John:
And to the extent that their power exists inside Apple, they're trying to make that happen.
John:
But it could be that that opinion is not...
John:
universal throughout the company and may not be the position that eventually wins.
John:
So what we end up with is a company that perhaps has rightly, like in the worst case scenario for us, the company has rightly seen that this product and this way of computing is a relic and it needs to go away.
John:
But instead of saying that, instead of saying, like I said last time, instead of saying, oh, laptops of the future, there's no more desktops, and the Mac is going to be no more pretty soon.
John:
It's a legacy platform, as many of the scary articles have said.
John:
The future is iOS.
John:
We know this is painful, but it's going to happen.
John:
Sorry.
John:
Instead of saying that, every time there's any...
John:
crankiness about it from their customers they say reassuring things they say oh don't worry like i know it seems like we don't care about what we totally do it's super important we love the mac blah blah blah blah and then they proceed to you know their actions don't back that up time and again their actions
John:
you know give us something throw throw a little crumb our way and then leave us hanging or you know the mac pro the trash can like they did this amazing thing and then left us hanging for three years and now we're not getting much of anything from the mac these days very far less frequent updates uh updates that aren't as satisfying to traditional mac users and we just get
John:
Some, you know, random platitudes.
John:
So I think that even if we are dinosaurs and we are the last generation of people that's ever going to care about this type of computing and it will fade away with us, Apple is not handling it the right way.
John:
And if it turns out that actually this way of computing is not going away, then Apple is definitely not hailing it the right way, as discussed many times in the past.
John:
But anyway, that's the point I wanted to make about these type of articles, is that if, like us, you are upset about the Mac, you always have to think that it could be that you are a relic, that you are the Apple II user, saying the Mac is never going to be the future, you can't get real work done on the Mac, Apple II forever.
John:
Right.
John:
Or any other thing you can pick up for any other analogy, buggy whip salesman, you know, horse versus automobile, whatever, whatever you want to even in radio versus television, you know, movies, you know, the Internet versus everything that came before it, basically.
John:
Sometimes you're in that group.
John:
that is being left behind.
John:
And if you are, it looks and feels exactly the same as if the whole rest of the world is doing something terribly wrong and you're the only one who knows about it.
John:
And unfortunately, it's difficult to say which way things are going to go until later.
John:
So five years from now, ten years from now, I think we'll have much more clarity about
John:
whether we ended up being right or wrong.
John:
But either way, right now, I think Apple is mishandling things in one direction or another.
Casey:
So, John, as somebody who was at one point a iPod Touch devotee, when did you know that that was not the right way forward?
Casey:
When did you know that the iPod Touch was not the right device for you anymore?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I mean, I think it was more than just you not wanting to pay for a more expensive cell phone plan, right?
Casey:
So at what point did you say, you know what, the iPod Touch is not long for this world, or alternatively, it's not satisfying my needs, and it's time to get an iPhone?
Casey:
Because I feel like that's a similar situation, right?
Casey:
Like, you seem to have been on the wrong side of that, and it seems like the writer answer is to be an iPhone person rather than an iPod Touch person.
John:
No, Apple was on the wrong side of that one.
John:
Here's why.
John:
That situation, it's not, like, I wasn't changing from the Apple II to the Mac or from the Mac to an iOS device.
John:
iPod Touch is an iPhone minus the phone part.
John:
Like, it's the same OS.
John:
Sure, sure.
John:
experience it's not a different platform it's not a different paradigm it's not even a different form factor it's basically the same exact thing now Apple did stop updating it to keep pace with the phone stuff but that was so easy to make that switch because like I'm not even changing anything like it's literally the same thing only now there's a phone in it right and it's just faster and it's nicer and
John:
So that was an easy thing to make.
John:
And the reason I think Apple was wrong is because that's not a transition.
John:
There's no transition from iPod Touch to iPhone that Apple needed to make.
John:
They didn't need to get the dinosaurs off of the old platform.
John:
It's the same freaking thing.
John:
They just decided that it wasn't as important.
John:
And, well, I don't know if I'm going to say they're wrong because they were probably right in terms of volume because they probably sell way more phones than those things, so who cares, whatever.
John:
But what I'm going to say about them being wrong is there was no, strictly speaking, there was no strategic reason to,
John:
migrate people off the iPod Touch because it's not like a legacy platform.
John:
It is the current platform.
John:
It runs the current version of the OS.
John:
It is getting people into the iOS ecosystem.
John:
There's nothing about it that is counter to their broad strategy.
John:
It just doesn't sell as much and they can justify the investment to keep being updated or whatever.
John:
So in that respect, they're probably right.
John:
But
John:
in terms of like had they done the opposite they would not have been making a strategic mistake they just update that and lockstep with the rest of the iphones like they had done before everything would be fine they wouldn't be selling any more ipod touches their ipod touch customers might be a little bit happier you know but but but you're right that the the one similarity that has is
John:
when they stopped updating it frequently enough and when i saw that if i really want the fastest ios device available or anything that's even in the ballpark the only choice i have is an iphone that's when i had to switch and like i said it was easy because it's the same it's the same thing it's the same platform it's the same software everything
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
So, Marco, what do you think about all this?
Casey:
I mean, you've been stunningly quiet.
Casey:
I know you have some thoughts here, so lay it on me.
Marco:
I mean, I almost don't know where to begin.
Marco:
I honestly don't care two craps about the iPod Touch, but the whole story about what's going on with the Mac, I care very, very much about.
Marco:
It's hard to know where to start, so forgive me if this is disorganized, like most of what I say.
Marco:
What bothers me about the discussion around this and about seemingly Apple's position on this by their mostly inaction around a lot of the Mac product line and the Mac OS, honestly, is
Marco:
is that, you know, to pull up the old Steve Jobs truck analogy, which it's not an amazingly fitting analogy because, you know, cars and trucks are not computers and phones.
Marco:
Like, that's not – it doesn't fit incredibly well.
Marco:
But there's enough parallels with what he was saying that I think it's worth –
Marco:
revisiting that for a second and kind of trying to explain how i feel the way i feel as a as a not only as a mac user but as a mac pro user really apple is like the only manufacturer in the world of decent trucks and they discovered a few years ago that cars are more profitable and
Marco:
And so they've decided, you know what?
Marco:
We're just hardly going to update trucks anymore.
Marco:
And we're just going to not make the biggest ones anymore.
Marco:
And most people don't need the biggest ones.
Marco:
But some people do.
Marco:
And what if it takes 20 years to develop a good truck-making company?
Marco:
So I know this analogy is being stretched to hell.
Marco:
And it is long gone.
Marco:
And I'm abusing the crap out of it.
Marco:
However...
Marco:
Apple is abandoning parts of the market for which there is no substitute for what Apple has been making.
Marco:
And if they're not abandoning it, they're neglecting it.
Marco:
And they might be abandoning it soon.
Marco:
And everyone says... The Apple excusers who hear discussion about this often respond with...
Marco:
well, they're just not making computers for you, or this product just isn't for you anymore, or they don't care to satisfy your needs anymore.
Marco:
But to some degree, it isn't that simple because these needs will continue to exist.
Marco:
People who need Macs, period, to do their work, and people who need high-end Macs also, or certain high-end software and hardware needs...
Marco:
those needs continue whether apple feels like addressing them or not but if apple has been addressing them all these years and then stops that leaves those people really screwed like with nothing because it isn't
Marco:
usually as simple as jumping to windows like unless unless what you do is as i described you know about the server studio two episodes ago um you know if what you do is primarily like in in one adobe creative suite app or something like that where like it's it's an app that's available on both platforms and that's most of what you do you know for for your computer needs for that computer whatever like if it's like a workstation or if it's like a studio computer or whatever that's a different story um
Marco:
But for people who use the whole OS in integrated ways, multiple software packages, maybe software that's only available on that OS, you can't just start using Windows.
Marco:
No, it isn't that simple.
Marco:
And there's a lot of investment both in not only software that you buy, but also there might be custom software that is developed for this OS that doesn't exist on the other OS.
Marco:
Or if you're a developer, you've built...
Marco:
your software library, your code base, your customer base, all on this OS.
Marco:
So just telling people, like, oh, just go use Windows, that's not a great answer.
Marco:
If Apple stops addressing a market, in many cases, those people are just completely out of luck.
Marco:
And there seems to be this, like...
Marco:
design virus.
Marco:
It's this kind of cult of saying no as a feature.
Marco:
It's almost as though when people back when Samsung first started really ripping off Apple heavily, Steve was still alive for that part.
Marco:
The way people would rip off Apple would basically be to look at some kind of superficial quality that Apple products have.
Marco:
Like, oh, everything is rounded and has blue bulbous colors on it or whatever.
Marco:
And it removes ports or whatever.
Marco:
They would take some kind of superficial quality and just apply that as gospel without really understanding why that was done that way.
Marco:
And without understanding that there were trade-offs involved and that sometimes you shouldn't do things that way.
Marco:
and basically copying a superficial attribute and just replicating it without understanding why and without ever questioning it.
Marco:
I almost feel like that's how Apple's designing their own product line now as kind of repeating the, oh, I guess we can make it thinner because what else are we going to do?
Marco:
I guess we can remove some ports because that's the future, in quotes.
Marco:
But it's almost like they've lost track of...
Marco:
Why it's sometimes worth removing things.
Marco:
Why it sometimes isn't.
Marco:
And it's like they're saying no or removing things for the sake of saying no or removing them.
Marco:
And this is kind of permeating now the Apple commentary culture right now of kind of assuming that everything that Apple takes away or makes worse is for the future and inevitable.
Marco:
And it's universally a good thing.
Marco:
Of course this was progress.
Marco:
And they apply that same thinking to when Apple basically cuts off somebody's needs and say, oh, well, I guess they just don't feel like serving you anymore or you're not worth serving.
Marco:
And by the way, for a company where you have quarterly results that keep going down...
Marco:
And product lines that seems like the growth is being problematic for you.
Marco:
I'm not sure it's the wisest move in the world to throw away market share that you've earned hard over the last decade or two.
Marco:
To tell somebody your needs are not worth serving...
Marco:
is a big slap in the face to them and that doesn't leave people happy with apple or likely to buy a lot of other apple stuff and so they're literally throwing away market share with everything they cut neglect or change for the worse or choose not to address you know they're literally throwing away market share and
Marco:
And in a market like the PC market, where market share is hard to come by, and there's not a ton of growth happening of the market as a whole, that's kind of the opposite of what you should be doing, really.
Marco:
Apple should be trying to address more needs with the Mac, not fewer.
Marco:
But anyway, going back to the more general stuff, I worry now that Apple and also the Apple commenters all seem to support this notion unquestioningly.
Marco:
that removing things and making things, quote, simpler, which often involves cutting off people's needs and what they were doing, that that's universally a good thing.
Marco:
And I think that deserves more critical thinking at Apple.
Marco:
I think that deserves more pushback.
Marco:
Because sometimes that is the right answer, but not every time.
Marco:
And it really does seem like Apple has lost the ability to tell the difference.
John:
So what did you think about what I said before about how from the inside, it's difficult to distinguish between the situation that you described and the situation where Apple is actually right.
John:
And they're just not there being they're not being honest, maybe with themselves even, but certainly not with us about the fact that we're moving away from it.
John:
Like, you think you could tell the difference from our perspective, whether whether we're just being left behind and it's painful or whether we are actually right and Apple's doing something stupid?
Marco:
Honestly, I don't know.
Marco:
I don't have any way to know that.
Marco:
You can look at the market.
Marco:
There is a clear trend that mobile is up and PC-style OSs, including macOS, are down.
Marco:
Things like web browsing share, you can see that going way towards mobile now.
Marco:
It's obvious that's where usage percentages are going.
Marco:
I'm not yet convinced that it is inevitable that PC-style computing is going to go away or even be incredibly marginalized.
Marco:
I don't think those are necessarily givens.
Marco:
I would be very surprised if either of those happened, actually.
Marco:
And granted, I'm wrong all the time.
Marco:
So this could happen next year.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But what I see is a lot of common tasks moving to phones and tablets.
Marco:
Sure, that's fine.
Marco:
Phones and tablets are wonderful things.
Marco:
Honestly, I think the phone is the way better thing.
Marco:
But we live in abundance in technology now.
Marco:
We can have both.
Marco:
Cool, that's fine.
Marco:
But I think what we see is that even the most dedicated people who love using iPads for all their work, for instance, still almost all of them have a Mac because there's like one or two or ten things that you need the Mac to do that iOS not only can't do but probably won't ever do.
Marco:
I don't see any change on the horizon that's going to change that.
Marco:
So I feel like it's going to kind of settle in where... Right now, there's a line going in a certain direction where I think it's going to kind of look more like an asymptotic curve than a straight line, where it's going to flatten and plateau and...
Marco:
There's going to be a certain baseline usage that people will just need PC-style computers and OSs to do this chunk of common tasks.
Marco:
Because the PC, and again, I use the word PC here.
Marco:
I really do mean both Windows and Mac PCs.
Marco:
And I refer to the PC-style operating system as opposed to iOS and Android, and especially iOS.
Marco:
The way iOS works is almost the way a game console works these days.
Marco:
It's very much like console computing, where everything is very much locked down.
Marco:
much more proprietary.
Marco:
You have much less control as the user.
Marco:
There's much less potential for messing around or customization or hacking things or using little tools that can hook into the OS and provide cool functionality.
Marco:
There's almost none of that or very little of that.
Marco:
And then the PC-style operating system allows you to basically install whatever you want
Marco:
and the programs can do to a large degree whatever they want.
Marco:
And of course, that comes with good and bad.
Marco:
There's a lot of security issues with that.
Marco:
However, ultimately, what that allows is for the PC to be a way, way more customizable work environment.
Marco:
It allows it to address needs that the platform vendor never imagined, and it allows it to basically fill in all of the holes.
Marco:
So there's all sorts of what we call edge cases, which has become a bad word for some reason.
Marco:
you know there's all sorts of things that that we have to do and i'm not and like i also want to be really clear here that like thinking that these edge cases only apply to geeks and the geeks are a small market both of those things are wrong geeks are a freaking huge market and everyone needs to do these things sometimes
Marco:
So anyway, PC-style operating systems fill in these gaps.
Marco:
They are the most versatile software ecosystems that have ever existed.
Marco:
iOS and the lockdown console computing model that it provides is very nice in a number of ways, but one thing it really isn't is versatile.
Marco:
It's capable.
Marco:
You can do a lot of things, but it's not versatile.
Marco:
And PCOSes fill that in.
Marco:
So there are so many needs that really can either only be done on PCOSes or are just so ridiculous to do on iOS that you only really will ever want to do them on PCOSes.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
That I don't see changing.
Marco:
I don't see some kind of massive shift on the horizon where iOS is going to suddenly allow you to hook in and provide your own battery widget in the status bar and allow apps to talk to each other more directly and share files more directly.
Marco:
I don't see that.
Marco:
That would ruin iOS in a lot of ways.
Marco:
So there's always going to be massive types of things that are really only possible on PCOSes.
Marco:
And the percentage of time that you need to do one of those things will probably continue to shrink over time the way it has.
Marco:
But I don't think those needs are going away.
Marco:
So I don't foresee a future in which a lot of people who have ever needed a PC will stop needing a PC completely.
Marco:
They might use it less.
Marco:
They might replace it less often.
Marco:
I mean, we see that now.
Marco:
But they're still going to use them.
Marco:
So for Apple to completely neglect that, which they're not doing yet.
Marco:
They're not completely neglecting it.
Marco:
They're partly neglecting it now.
Marco:
But for Apple to basically slowly let that die, I think is incredibly unwise.
Marco:
And I think that threatens their dominance in their more profitable markets.
Marco:
Because part of the reason that people love iPhones so much is that a lot of the people, not all of them, but a lot of the people who both
Marco:
use and buy iphones and also who influence other people to use and buy iphones uh a lot of them are mac users so if the mac starts to wither or dies a lot of those people are gonna start looking around and consider different phone platforms as well because a lot of the advantage using an iphone is how it integrates well with the mac environment not all of it again this doesn't represent everyone who buys an iphone obviously it's a much bigger market but like this is a non-trivial size group and it's a very influential group
Marco:
And so to completely throw away everything they've built with Mac OS, which is amazing, to completely throw away all of the goodwill of all these millions of users that they've built up over decades, I think is an incredible strategic error.
Marco:
Not to mention the tragedy it is for those of us who use PCs, which is nearly everybody.
Marco:
Those of us who use PCs...
Marco:
If Apple leaves or effectively neglects this market, there's nothing better left.
Marco:
Windows is not good.
Marco:
We can probably get by on Windows, but it's not good.
Marco:
Linux is really not made for this.
Marco:
I mean, you can kind of wedge it in there, but it doesn't do a great job of being a desktop OS, and it serves many fewer needs.
Marco:
Mac OS is the cream of the crop.
Marco:
And no one's going to come along and just make another Mac OS.
Marco:
That takes 20 years.
Marco:
And really good talent and really good direction and really good opportunities that are probably not going to happen ever again in personal computers, or at least in our lifetimes.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Apple, to some degree, like somebody on Twitter, I'm sorry, I forget who right now.
Marco:
Somebody on Twitter said earlier that they almost have a social responsibility to the world of computing to keep making Mac OS, to keep satisfying these needs.
Casey:
That's going way too far.
Marco:
Honestly, is it?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
You know what?
Marco:
I bet Steve Jobs would have agreed with that statement.
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
I mean, who knows?
Marco:
But... Steve Jobs loved computers.
Marco:
And even when new stuff came out, he loved computers.
Marco:
And he, I think... I mean, I didn't know him, but I think that's the kind of thing he would have agreed with.
Marco:
You know, his whole thing, like, the glass of ice water in hell, like...
Marco:
I really do think that he saw it as his responsibility to bring good computing to the world.
Marco:
And Apple still does that with iOS, certainly.
Marco:
And the Mac is still good for now, but it is very, very clear that the Mac is not being given the priority and resources that it needs to move forward.
Marco:
It's very clear that whatever level of resources and priority it's getting now is enough to kind of Steve Ballmer the Mac line.
Marco:
It'll keep going.
Marco:
It'll make some money.
Marco:
It'll be profitable.
Marco:
But the ship won't be able to turn because that takes more than what they're giving it.
Marco:
And so if and when the market turns into something new, whether that's VR, AR type stuff, whether that is something like the Surface Studio, or who knows what else will come along the way...
Marco:
Whatever is going to be the next big change in PC-style hardware and software, I can almost guarantee that Apple will miss it.
Marco:
I can almost guarantee that macOS will fall behind because they are simply not giving it enough thought and priority to make it stay on top of the game.
Marco:
They're doing well now because they had such a big lead over Windows in so many areas for so long.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Eventually, that lead is going to go away.
Marco:
It's going to take a while because Microsoft is not very good at things.
Marco:
But eventually, something big is going to come to the world of PCs that people want, that it will shift to.
Marco:
And Apple will not be ready.
Marco:
They absolutely will not be ready.
Marco:
And they will totally miss it.
Marco:
And that's when they will lose the Mac completely.
Marco:
Right now, it seems like they're okay with that outcome because of their actions.
Marco:
Whatever they say, their actions say that they are okay with that outcome.
Marco:
And I think that's a huge mistake.
Marco:
We're sponsored this week, again, by CocoConf.
Marco:
Go to CocoConf.com and use code ATP to save 50% on tickets for Yosemite and Chicago.
Marco:
CocoConf is a technical conference for Apple developers and designers.
Marco:
It's amazing.
Marco:
Next year, on March 28th through 23rd, CocoConf will be returning to Yosemite National Park for its third Yosemite event.
Marco:
This is again held at the Yosemite National... I'm sorry.
Marco:
This is again held at the Yosemite Lodge at the Falls, right in the heart of Yosemite National Park.
Marco:
It is a beautiful, picturesque venue.
Marco:
In fact, there's even a guided photo walk led by Ted photographer James Duncan Davidson, who is both an awesome photographer and a super nice guy.
Marco:
And they have amazing speakers, including Ashley Nelson Hornstein, Brent Simmons, Daniel Steinberg, David Smith, Georgia Dow, Jamie Newberry, Matt Dranz, and Sebastian DeWitt.
Marco:
Personally, I have seen almost all of these people speak.
Marco:
They are great.
Marco:
They are top of their field.
Marco:
I highly recommend that you go to this.
Marco:
And you can also get music from James Dempsey and The Breakpoints and by our theme song author, Jonathan Song-A-Day Man.
Marco:
I've also seen both of these acts, and they're also both amazing.
Marco:
So this is a fantastic event in an amazing location, Yosemite National Park.
Marco:
I mean, it's this beautiful, beautiful park.
Marco:
I can't even describe it.
Marco:
And all of this is with these great speakers, with this great event.
Marco:
You've got to see it.
Marco:
Go to CocoConf.com.
Marco:
Use code ATP to save 15% on tickets for Yosemite.
Marco:
And also they have a CocaConf Chicago event happening on April 21st and 22nd.
Marco:
That will also use that 15% with the code ATP on that too.
Marco:
So check it out.
Marco:
CocaConf.com for Yosemite in March and Chicago in April.
Marco:
Use code ATP to save 15% on tickets.
Marco:
Thank you very much to CocaConf for sponsoring once again.
Thank you.
Casey:
So, I don't know when it was, four, maybe five years ago, there was this magazine that was called The Magazine.
Casey:
And I pitched a story to The Magazine.
Casey:
uh about the importance of the manual transmission and much to my dismay it was refused because somebody else has already had already basically claimed a story on the manual transmission as it turns out that story was by the terrible human being uh dan morin who as it turns out wrote a much better story than mine
Casey:
And I will forget to link it in the show notes, but my version of the story is on my old Tumblr blog somewhere that you can dig up if you're interested.
Casey:
The manual transmission on a modern car means a tremendous amount to me.
Casey:
And I don't say that to be funny.
Casey:
I don't say that in a hyperbolic way.
Casey:
I genuinely mean that.
Casey:
Like, I...
Casey:
I will be devastated when there comes a time that the only car that I can buy with a manual transmission is one that I don't want.
Casey:
Say, for example, a pickup truck.
Casey:
And I'm not saying a pickup is wrong for other people, but it's not the kind of car that I want.
Casey:
Oh, it's an edge case.
Casey:
You can just ignore it.
Casey:
I know you're being snarky, but you're kind of right.
Casey:
I'm not.
Marco:
It's like the most popular selling vehicle in America.
Casey:
Well, I see your point.
Marco:
It's actually an excellent analogy because pickup trucks are the kind of thing that most people never think about, but they're actually everywhere and tons of people need them to do their jobs.
Marco:
And a lot of people just like them.
Casey:
Yeah, you're right.
Casey:
And you're right, that is a pretty good analogy.
Casey:
But it ruins my whole story, so I'm going to ignore it.
Casey:
Okay, feel free, move on.
Casey:
But the point I'm driving at is that, for me, I want a four-door passenger car with three pedals in it.
Casey:
That's what I want.
Casey:
And to me, driving a car with only two pedals is...
Casey:
is not enjoyable in in some ways i think it's a little bit unsafe and i know a lot of people are going to disagree with that with that and that's fine but i just don't that's not for me i don't care for it and until i cannot anymore i will always choose cars that have a that have a manually operated clutch and
Casey:
That's what I want.
Casey:
That's what I'm interested in.
Casey:
And that's what I will do until I have a compelling reason not to, as in my left leg is broken or I'm down a limb somewhere, whatever.
Casey:
All of that said, I don't think there's any question that I am one of few and that the rest of the world not only is moving on, but has moved on.
Casey:
It's a miracle that...
Casey:
That's a bit overblown, but I'll stick with it.
Casey:
It's a miracle that you can buy a 3 Series BMW with a 6-speed.
Casey:
It's a miracle that Tina was able to get a 6-speed Accord in 2016.
Casey:
And it's clear that you guys, John, had to go through some hoops to get it.
Casey:
It's not like you pulled it off a lot.
Casey:
It's not like they shipped it in from Connecticut or New York or something like that.
Casey:
It was built specifically for you because nobody else wanted that.
Casey:
It's clear to me that driving a manual transmission is not long for this world.
Casey:
But why?
Casey:
I love it.
Casey:
In so many ways, I think it's better.
Casey:
But the fact of the matter is, I'm one of a very, very small breed, and I'm one of a group that is going away in ever-increasing numbers.
Casey:
Look at the take rate of the manual transmission on M3s and M4s.
Casey:
They're plummeting.
Casey:
The only reason that the M5, the most recent M5, the F10, it's F10, right?
Casey:
The only reason the F10 M5, God, that sounds like a pickup.
Casey:
Anyway, the only reason the most modern M5 had a manual transmission was because of Americans, of all people, which is really weird.
Casey:
And it was only in America.
Casey:
I believe that's true.
Casey:
I might have my facts wrong, but it doesn't matter.
Casey:
You get the point.
Marco:
At least North America.
Casey:
Right, right.
Casey:
So nobody else seems to want a manual transmission.
Casey:
And to be honest, on paper and by most metrics, the transmission that Marco's M5 had is better.
Casey:
It's better in pretty much every measurable way.
Casey:
But here it is.
Casey:
I'm going to be really freaking pissed that whenever I buy my next car, it's a 50-50 shot.
Casey:
I won't be able to get a six-speed.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And when I looked for my car, which admittedly I'd got used, which to some degree makes things a lot worse, but it took me something like six months to find this car because to find a 335 with the M Sport package is hard.
Casey:
That wasn't a criteria, you big jerk.
Casey:
To find a 335... It just happened to be white.
Casey:
It did, I swear.
Marco:
Like all of your other cars.
Casey:
No, the other ones were deliberate.
Casey:
This one was an accident.
Casey:
But anyway, the point is, to find one with an M Sport package, that was really difficult.
Casey:
But to find any 3 Series with a 6-speed...
Casey:
get out of town because you're going to be waiting forever.
Casey:
It's impossible.
Casey:
But here it is.
Casey:
That's what I want.
Casey:
And that's what's right for me.
Casey:
I don't care if it's not right for you.
Casey:
It's what's right for me.
Casey:
But the fact of the matter is, I'm a dying breed.
Casey:
I'm one of few.
Casey:
And I cannot expect BMW to forevermore
Casey:
cater to captain casey it's just not gonna work it's not profitable it's not manageable it's not understandable it's not reasonable it's not gonna work all that being said i love the mac hand on heart
Casey:
I cannot begin to describe how much I love the Mac.
Casey:
I feel so much faster on the Mac than I do on iOS.
Casey:
That doesn't mean I can't do equivalent things on iOS in most cases, but I love the Mac.
Casey:
I feel hamstrung when I'm on an iOS device.
Casey:
I feel crippled.
Casey:
I feel like I have handcuffs on.
Casey:
That's not the case for everyone.
Casey:
Clearly, people like Federico and
Casey:
uh in in mike hurley and so many other people have done amazing things on ios i'm not trying to say that ios isn't right or good or great or amazing for me it is not the right answer and and i love the mac i feel at home on the mac i feel free on the mac and yes that sounds really ridiculous and lame and kind of granola but i know it doesn't free on the mac
Casey:
I really do feel free on the Mac.
Casey:
I agree with you, Marco, that I will be devastated if the Mac goes away.
Casey:
But the more I look around and the more I see the people around me, the more clear it is that I am not one of the many, I'm one of the few.
Casey:
And at some point...
Casey:
At some point, this group that loves the manual transmission, this group that loves Mac OS isn't going to be big enough to really freaking matter anymore.
Casey:
And I will be devastated.
Casey:
I mean that word.
Casey:
I use that word deliberately.
Casey:
I will be frigging devastated when that time comes.
Casey:
Maybe not as much as you two, but if not, really damn close.
Casey:
Because as much as I beat the two of you up about, you know, conventioning about the Mac and the state of the Mac and this and that,
Casey:
I agree with you.
Casey:
I want the Mac to live forever.
Casey:
But to me, it's becoming more and more clear that I'm not going to have a manual transmission much longer.
Casey:
And I'm not convinced, but I'm not terribly sure that I'm going to have a Mac much longer.
Casey:
And I think the reality of the situation is all three of us are just going to have to come to grips with that.
Casey:
And it doesn't make me happy.
Casey:
It doesn't make me smile.
Casey:
It makes me really damn sad.
Casey:
Not to the point that I'm losing sleep over it, John, but it makes me really damn sad.
Casey:
And
Casey:
And I hope that I'm wrong.
Casey:
God, I hope I'm wrong.
Casey:
But at some point, all three of us need to look around and say, you know what?
Casey:
We aren't the ones that matter anymore.
Casey:
And I look at Aaron, who is by every measure a far more normal human than I am.
Casey:
every measurable way and i look at her and i think to myself she has this macbook air and yes it went underwater twice but nevertheless it's working today which is to clarify for any listeners who forgot it was casey's fault it went underwater not absolutely absolutely my fault
Casey:
But she very rarely uses her MacBook Air.
Casey:
Why?
Casey:
Because her iPhone works for her.
Casey:
I gave her my old iPad.
Casey:
The first retina iPad.
Casey:
Was that the third generation iPad?
Casey:
Doesn't matter.
Casey:
I gave her my old iPad.
Casey:
She never touched it because her phone was enough for her.
Casey:
And I think that for most people...
Casey:
That's pretty much the truth.
Casey:
Maybe not at work, but in Erin's case, she's a stay-at-home mom, so that is her work, actually, come to think of it.
Casey:
For a lot of people, they don't need Max.
Casey:
Now, take Tiff, for example.
Casey:
Tiff is also a stay-at-home mom, but she has other things that she does, and she absolutely, without a shadow of a doubt, needs a Max.
Casey:
So I'm not trying to say this is universal, but I take Erin as an exemplar of somebody who is normal or a lot more normal than I am, and she...
Casey:
She does have a Mac and she does use her Mac.
Casey:
But if I told her that her Mac was gone forever, say, for example, if I dumped a bunch of water on it, I think she'd be okay.
Casey:
And none of this makes me happy.
Casey:
I'm not pleased to say these things.
Casey:
But in summary, I think all three of us need to realize that we're part of a group that's getting ever smaller and that's ever less profitable and that probably doesn't matter that much to Apple.
Casey:
And that sucks.
Casey:
It totally sucks.
Casey:
But it's reality.
John:
You know, before I don't know if we want to refute all the things you say, because I think Marco and I could rebut many of this.
Casey:
But I want to.
John:
But I want to point out that both of you seem to be uninterested in my thought experiments.
John:
I'm assigning it to you as a homework assignment because.
John:
right now you're still talking about like whether or not what we think might happen is happening and i'm still more interested at this point in how you would tell the difference between the two scenarios between the casey scenario where we're stick shift drivers or apple two users and it's just happening to us and the scenario the moro marco scenario where apple is doing something dumb and uh really they should be supporting the mac because if they don't
John:
uh those needs aren't going away um and again not not the specific arguments on either side of it but how if you are in the middle of it as a mac user as an apple 2 user as a stick shift driver what should you look for to distinguish those two situations right and i'm not sure i have great answers either but i think it's something worth thinking about so we could table that as as a homework assignment i suppose
John:
um and on on the specific stick shift things and on the mac i mean like i'll just throw out a few of them like so the idea that we're shrinking like percentage wise um mac market share the line for mac market share uh in in the you know just in any any kind of line you want to put overall pc market share mac sales years versus years it looks way better than the stick shift line
John:
like way better the stick shift line fell off a cliff years ago that's true in the basement and the mac line if you look at it on all the graphs it's boring but it's pretty steady so regardless of you know just in terms of degree i mean you could still totally be right about it but in terms of degree
John:
I'm going to say that the Mac is not in a stick shift situation.
John:
I mean, we would know it.
John:
If it was in a stick shift situation, I wouldn't have to go to seven different stores and beg people to sell me a car.
John:
I have money.
John:
I want to give you.
John:
Will you give me?
John:
No, I swear.
John:
I talked to so many dealers.
John:
Everybody wanted to sell me a CBT Accord.
John:
Nobody wanted my money.
John:
I'm like waving dollar bills in their face.
John:
I have money.
John:
I'll do your finance thing.
John:
Whatever incentives you have, I'll do them.
John:
No, we don't have any of those.
John:
Maybe try back later.
John:
Anyway, so we're not in that situation yet.
John:
And the other thing on what Marco was talking about...
John:
One aspect that would show that Apple is screwing this up, and this has happened in the past to Apple specifically, is that if Apple doesn't fill the needs of some market, and that market is heavily invested in the Mac, I mean, that can wreck companies, that can really disrupt the industry, but more than any other type of business...
John:
People that need computers, PC style computers for professional needs are the most willing and able, like as an industry, not as an individual company, perhaps, but the most willing and able to bail and go to something else.
John:
If they're using Macs for video editing and Apple seems not interested in video editing, the whole industry will shift to a different product.
John:
on a different platform like so they'll stop final cut and they'll go to avid or you know same thing with like audio editing applications or 3d 3d for a little while looks like the mac might be a factor but it's like nope windows nt or you know just has sgi people switch from sgis to windows nt which seemed unheard of like
John:
They'll switch.
John:
If you don't fill their needs and they still need to do this thing and it seems like you're not supporting them anymore, they will ditch you and retrain everybody and buy all new hardware and a whole bunch of companies will go out of business because they won't make that transition and they'll hate you forever and they will change.
John:
and one good way to tell if apple is you know being smart about this or not it's like if they abandon these industries and people still need to professionally edit video on a pc style workstation and apple isn't interested in selling them hardware that works for their needs they will switch to windows they absolutely will they will hate it they may be sad the people who are dying the will apple users will be sad some kind of companies might go out of business because they can't absorb the cost to turn over all the hardware and retrain everybody
John:
But they absolutely will switch.
John:
And that, you know, that's a bad sign for Apple.
John:
And my final point, I know we need to get to the Q&A part and we will.
John:
My final point is that if there are any Apple people listening, hi, Craig, to this podcast, and if you're sitting there as like an important...
John:
important person inside apple and you're hearing all this moaning about you know these three die hard mac users uh who are talking as if the mac is already dead or talking about that possibility and you're like i you're like how is this happening like maybe they disagree with what we're doing with the mac but but like we must be you know if you have this feeling like we what are we doing to make these customers our most loyal customers are customers that are love to give us money and want to buy macs and they think the platform is dead
John:
If you have that feeling that something has gone terribly wrong, it could be one of two things.
John:
One, that you are one of those people inside Apple that I was just talking about who feels the same way about the Mac as we do and is totally honest.
John:
And every time they get up on a stage and say, we care about the Mac, it's really important to us, blah, blah, blah.
John:
But maybe the rest of the company doesn't agree with you.
John:
Or two, the whole company is all on the same page that the Mac is really important and you are doing the world's worst job of convincing your most loyal customers of this fact.
John:
But pretend it's the truth.
John:
If it is the truth...
John:
You're doing a bad job of convincing Mac users of that fact.
John:
So no matter how you slice this, something Apple is doing is wrong.
John:
Strategically, PR-wise, marketing timing.
John:
Well, that's true.
John:
Specifically...
John:
specifically on the issue of how apple is handling the mac there is no way around the fact that something apple is doing is wrong it's just a question of whether they're wrong by not being honest with us they're wrong by not being able to convince us of a thing that really is true or they're wrong that they shouldn't they are de-emphasizing the mac and they shouldn't be um and all those possibilities are kind of up in the air i think we've talked about a lot of them but like something is going wrong here as as is true with so many things in 2016 something has gone wrong
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, John, so you've come up with some ground rules about the Q&A section, which I actually think were quite clever.
Marco:
So would you like... I love that you had to have rules.
John:
All right, we're going to do Q&A, but they're going to be rules.
John:
Those rules are mostly for you two, but for the people who are listening, I just wanted to tell you.
Casey:
They're for us two.
Casey:
I see.
Casey:
Okay.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
For us, not for the audience.
John:
As far as the audience is concerned, here's the deal.
John:
We asked for questions just today.
John:
So you have one day to send in questions.
John:
You're supposed to send it through the email form.
John:
If you sent it through Twitter, you didn't follow directions.
John:
um i maybe i didn't specifically say don't send it to twitter but i totally said send it here that's what the colon means it means that in this url anyway um we got tons of questions that's great a lot of people ask repeat questions we i picked and casey picked and i don't know if marco picked any a subset of these questions so if you send in your question it's probably not going to get answered because we had tons of questions and i just picked them out
John:
sometimes uh you ask 17 questions and i just took two sometimes i rephrase your question sometimes 17 people ask the same question and the person that i pick whose name is attached to it is basically random so this is the system it's not a great system but it's the system we have this was done in a rush uh in today uh what we're going to try to do with the questions because if we didn't do this we would answer two questions total is to do them quickly so rather than answer
John:
answer your question thoroughly because a lot of these questions like you know what's the best thing that apple did last year that's a whole show like that's not a quite you know so with those questions are still in there and our challenge as the people who are speaking on this podcast our challenge is to go against everything that's in our instincts and to try to answer these questions with one or two sentences and then move on which means we're not going to be able to have a big discussion about them but hopefully we will get to more of your questions so that's the strategy
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So I guess I will start the MC process and then if somebody else takes over, that's fine.
Casey:
We begin with Brian Hamilton who asks, how long does it take for Marco to edit an episode?
Casey:
I'm going to put that aside for just a split second.
Casey:
Does Casey still do his listen through?
Casey:
The turnaround for episodes has been much faster lately.
Casey:
So quick recap, it used to be that I would listen through each episode and I would mark when somebody coughed or we cross talked or whatever, then I would send that list of timestamps to Marco and he would do the actual edit.
Casey:
I would say it was between six months and a year ago that it became obvious to both Marco and I that my listen through was getting kind of redundant.
Casey:
And so I stopped doing that.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, do you remember when?
Marco:
I don't know, maybe halfway through the show.
Casey:
Okay, so with that said, how long does it take you to edit an episode?
Marco:
Total, with all the work involved in posting and everything, it helps a lot that you do the show notes now, which I used to do the show notes, and it put too much time on me, so I was having to spend way longer, and we were doing back and forth, so it took way... I had to do my part, and you had to do your part.
Marco:
It took forever.
Marco:
Now, total editing time is pretty...
Marco:
probably about three to four hours for a two-hour show.
Casey:
Which is a lot of time, but doesn't seem terrible to me.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And a lot of that is also because I'm using Logic, and Logic is not made for this.
Marco:
And this is one of the reasons I want to make my own editor, because I think if I made my own editor that was custom-optimized for editing podcasts, I think that three to four hours could be one to two hours, and with a lot less mousing and typing.
Casey:
I want to elaborate, but I'm going to move on.
Casey:
Stephen Hamm asks, have you read the sweet home guide to toaster ovens?
Casey:
I think this is mostly meant for John.
Casey:
Have you tried their pick?
Casey:
Do you agree with their methodology?
John:
This is a super common question to get it on Twitter all the time.
John:
I don't always respond to it because it's just so common at this point.
John:
Um, yes, I have read the sweet home guide to toaster ovens.
John:
Yes, I have tried their pick.
John:
Casey has a nice blog post.
John:
It lists all my toaster reviews.
John:
And if you go to that page, which I've sent to many people, their pick is on it.
John:
So you can hear what I have to say about it.
John:
Do you agree with their methodology?
John:
Um,
John:
i have different priorities for example their top pick the reason i dinged it was it was smaller than i would like like it doesn't fit as much stuff in it and so that kind of disqualifies it for like you know being able to put you know four big slices of bread or whatever in there and the ui was really weird so they are they prioritize the ui less than i do and the size is not i mean how could they make size the fact that they don't know what size toaster you need they're just trying to say this thing toasts really quickly which i said in my review and really evenly so
John:
So, yeah, that's the thing with any reviews, including the Sweet Homes.
John:
You read them to find out information, but you also are trying to find out what they prioritize and you have to compare that to how you prioritize.
John:
So it's not as if I disagree with anything they did.
John:
It's just that we have different priorities and you can hear that in the reviews.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Mike Reinhardt asks, Marco, what apps on your phone do you have red badges?
Casey:
And to give a little context here, Marco has made it very clear over the years, and I think you're right, that having these red badges with counts and whatnot is kind of ridiculous and stress-inducing.
Casey:
So, Marco, what apps have red badges?
Marco:
It's actually a pretty short list.
Marco:
the two that always have a red badge are phone and mail and the reasons for that are basically i suck at responding to email i use mark as unread as an organizational tool which i know is wrong and with phone i never listen to my voicemail so i have voicemails here let me see my my earliest unplayed voicemail is from october 3rd and i currently have 10 of them
Marco:
so that's why you you leave the badge on that even though you like that would seem like the reason you turn it off because it's meaningless because it's always going to be red right you know i've never even considered the possibility that i could turn it off i guess i'll look into that i also have one on photos right now just because there's like some shared album probably from casey
Marco:
that has something unread i have one on the apple podcast sunglasses spoiler alert cool i i have one on the apple podcast app because i have a folder of a handful of other podcast apps basically as i'm designing overcast i try to make sure that i don't rip off other apps too closely so like as i'm adding if i'm adding a new feature for instance and i have to design the ui i basically go and check like am i ripping off a competitor you know really clearly here or am i doing my own things i'd like to do my own thing whenever i can
Marco:
Uh, so I always have podcast apps that are showing their own unread badges that I didn't ask for.
Marco:
And then finally, I have a folder that shows an unread badge of 1500 because that is actually, uh, underscore David Smith pedometer plus plus app that is showing that as my step count for the day, which is actually horrible.
Marco:
And I just opened up the app and it's actually 5,800.
Marco:
So that was just out of date.
Marco:
Um, but anyway, that's it.
Marco:
Everything, everything else I have on my phone is either some app that I turned it off for or a game that doesn't use it.
Casey:
So that's it.
Casey:
Brian Moon asks, how did all of you meet initially online through Mac slash software channels or perhaps at a car dealership?
Casey:
So I've told this story in bits and pieces, but I don't know that I've ever told the complete version of the story.
Casey:
And part of that is because I thought it was kind of fun to have.
Casey:
a little bit of ambiguity about how the three of us met but 201 episodes in perhaps it's time to to remove all doubt so um marco and i met when we were 10 does that sound reasonable something like that something like that my recollection and i'll give you a chance to to interrupt in a second here marco um my recollection is that that your your mom was a school teacher and for the summers you would go to a lake in upstate new york and my grandparents my dad's parents
Casey:
had a house on the same lake.
Casey:
And it was one of those situations where we were like the only kids that were anywhere nearby.
Casey:
It came to light to our mutual caregivers that, oh, we have boy children around the same age.
Casey:
They should hang out.
Casey:
And so we would hang out and basically write either choose your own adventure games in VB1 or play too much Transport Tycoon, just generally be nerds and get yelled at to go outside.
Casey:
And then we kind of lost touch for a long time.
Casey:
And around the time that Tumblr started or right around the time that we graduated college, at least that's my recollection.
Casey:
Uh, we got back in touch and then I visited, or well, Aaron and I at this point actually visited you at Tumblr and then ended up meeting up with Tiff.
Casey:
And I think this was, it was 09.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so we got back in touch after that and we, and we got close again.
Casey:
Um, you know, there was never like a screw you, man.
Casey:
I hate you.
Casey:
It was just, we fell out of touch.
Casey:
And so we got close again.
Casey:
And then of course, because of that, I started listening to build and analyze hypercritical.
Casey:
And then when we, when I started going to WWDC in 2011, I ended up meeting John through Marco and
Casey:
And then John and I kind of got to be friendly and then eventually got to be relatively close.
Casey:
And then, you know, the whole story of me needling Marco, hey, we should do a car show.
Casey:
We should do a car show.
Casey:
And Marco said, hey, you know, we should we should get John involved because, you know, John also just stopped a podcast and would probably like to talk cars.
Casey:
And so we did neutral.
Casey:
And then then here we are on ATP 201 episodes later.
Casey:
That was as brief as I think I can reasonably make it.
John:
It's pretty good.
Casey:
Any thoughts from either of you?
John:
There's no thoughts, no time for thoughts.
Casey:
Cody Mims asks, question mostly for Marco.
Casey:
Why do you give Stitcher slash Google Play Music flack for being a podcast walled garden, but not iTunes?
Casey:
Not saying they're not bad for other reasons, but iTunes isn't exactly the Wild West.
Marco:
This is a pretty easy one.
Marco:
It's a question of degree.
Marco:
iTunes is a directory of public RSS feeds.
Marco:
Once you subscribe to a podcast on iTunes, the software then goes directly to the RSS feed every single time, downloads the episodes directly from your server, wherever you specify the feed to point to.
Marco:
And iTunes is basically out of the loop after that very first, you know, browse and subscribe action.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
So whereas Stitcher and Google Play Music are their own entirely proprietary crawling playback stats downloading platforms.
Marco:
And you have to like, you know...
Marco:
do all sorts of giving up data to them and agreeing to their terms and everything, where iTunes is really about as much of a directory as Yahoo was for the web back in the day.
Marco:
It's like iTunes is happy to have you go there, find what you want, and then iTunes is removed from the loop.
Marco:
They're cut out of the loop, and then you're just dealing with the feed.
Marco:
So basically, the way Apple does things with podcasts...
Marco:
is in support of an open ecosystem.
Marco:
Whereas the way Stitcher and Google Play Music are doing podcasts, it is a completely closed ecosystem that simply uses your RSS feed as input, but then copies over your audio, rehosts it, has everybody just participate within that system.
Marco:
And it's more like leeching off of the open world rather than what Apple does, which is really participating in it and then kind of handing you off to it.
John:
The other minor difference that I would add is that it's too late for iTunes.
John:
iTunes, it is a problem that everything is so centralized in iTunes.
John:
I mean, it's a benefit, obviously, that that's a place where you go to find your podcast, but it's also a problem.
John:
But it's way too late.
John:
Like by the time we got into it, iTunes was already there.
John:
So it is more useful in general to complain about the up and comers to say, you new thing that is coming that seems to be worse in all the ways that Marco just described.
John:
Stop doing that.
John:
Go away.
John:
Whereas by the time we came on the scenes, iTunes was already there.
John:
the winner of where you find podcasts if you are a mac user well also like the the itunes as a directory is that it's actually really nice to have a human monitored directory in podcasting yeah now i said it's a benefit but it's also you know not not great that one company controls that because again if apple decides they don't care then then we are left to the wolves the wolves being google play and stitcher well fortunately i built up this little thing on the side that has its own directory that you know kind of as an insurance policy against that
Casey:
A friend of the show, Ryan Jones, who you heard us talk about earlier today.
Marco:
Author of Weatherline, great weather app.
Marco:
My favorite weather app.
Casey:
It's been five years since Steve Jobs died.
Casey:
How was Apple doing relative to your expectations shortly after his death?
John:
This is a big challenge, guys.
John:
This is the big challenge.
John:
Get ready.
Casey:
So despite the fact that we've been complaining earlier this episode, I think that all things being equal, this is at least meeting my expectations, if not exceeding.
Casey:
I think Apple has its problems, but it's doing well, and I'm okay with this.
John:
Good job, Casey.
Marco:
You're up, Marco.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
I think somewhere between healthy and Steve Ballmer.
Wow.
Marco:
That's a big range.
John:
Could you nail them where between?
Marco:
Maybe like a third of the way away from Steve Ballmer.
Marco:
So like closer to that than healthy, but not like right on top of that.
Marco:
And what I mean by that, you know, Steve Ballmer was able to continue Microsoft into very profitable times.
Marco:
He was a very good businessman to keep things going.
Marco:
but he was clearly not able to identify future product direction that needed to happen and turn the company into that.
Marco:
I think Tim Cook has much of the same issue.
Marco:
Not as badly.
Marco:
I think Tim Cook is a much better leader than Steve Ballmer, especially in lots of ways, but especially in product direction.
Marco:
But I still think he has that problem.
Marco:
And I still think that...
Marco:
When the next big things come, Apple will miss them.
Marco:
And it's just a matter of time before that's a big problem for them.
Marco:
John?
John:
So I think they're, I'm going to say they are falling slightly short of my expectations.
John:
They're mostly meeting them.
John:
Like if you had said, what do you think Apple's going to be like?
John:
I would have described a scenario very similar to where we are now, with the exception that I would have said that at least one of the few things that Apple would try would hit stronger than it has, whether it's the watch or car or whatever.
John:
So I think they're slightly under, but not by much.
Casey:
there I think that's a that's a good way of looking at it Ryan continues of the necessary apps podcast player notes Twitter photos mail etc which you least satisfied with in other words what app that you use every day because it's the best available do you still not love I'll start in and I don't know if he intended to limit this to iOS or not
Casey:
I will give two answers very quickly.
Casey:
Number one, Overcast for the Mac.
Casey:
Number two, Slack.
Casey:
Slack is a dumpster fire on the Mac, and I hate it, but it's the best option available.
Marco:
Yeah, I'm going to go Photos.
Marco:
Photos is an app that I use constantly.
Marco:
It is a big part of my life, both on iOS and the Mac.
Marco:
The iOS is mostly capture.
Marco:
The Mac is mostly curation of the collection, editing, importing from cameras, and then picking through and doing minor edits.
Marco:
The iCloud Photo Library sync system is great.
Marco:
I have never had problems with it.
Marco:
It is wonderfully convenient.
Marco:
It works quickly and reliably the vast majority of the time for me.
Marco:
So the sync system is great.
Marco:
However, the Photos app, especially on the Mac...
Marco:
is very frustrating for me to use to do anything beyond getting the photo.
Marco:
It's nice that it syncs.
Marco:
That's wonderful.
Marco:
But then once I want to do anything with the pictures, whether it's as simple as when I took 50 photos during this event and I want to narrow it down to 10, photos on the Mac is just the worst in the world for that.
Marco:
It is so clunky.
Marco:
It is so unnecessarily clunky.
Marco:
Even doing basic editing operations, you have to wait and sit through all these animations and mode switches and everything, and it's
Marco:
It basically seems like it's fighting me doing anything, even the most basic operations that everybody would want to do with their photo app.
Marco:
But I do love the syncing so much that I tolerate that, but I do wish the app was better, especially on the Mac.
John:
John?
John:
I thought the last question was the challenge to try to succinctly say how you think Apple's doing five years after Steve Jobs is gone, but instead Marco goes for 10 minutes on the Photos app.
John:
It's not 10 minutes.
John:
It was like two.
John:
Yeah, so I can basically agree with him.
John:
I mean...
John:
i don't love photos i love some parts of it but everything i agree with everything marco said about dealing with the app it could be better but the the other contender that i mean and i also kind of agree with casey about slack but i kind of do love slack despite all its grossness um it's like eating at white castle
John:
Yeah.
John:
The other contender, though, is a another situation where I'm being left behind for explicable reasons.
John:
This this time, you know, I know I am is my favorite Twitter client on the Mac hasn't been updated in forever because it's not worthwhile for the developer to update this.
John:
But it is the only Mac Twitter app that I like.
John:
And it's frustrating to me that it doesn't have so many features and it's such a big mess because it just hasn't been updated.
John:
And I know why.
John:
And I just sit here clinging to it and using it until it doesn't launch anymore.
John:
And then I'll be sad.
Casey:
And which app is that?
Casey:
Because somebody will ask.
John:
That's Twitterific for the Mac, which I still really do like, but it is so far behind the state of the Twitter art at this point that I can't recommend other people use it.
Casey:
Anonymous asks, Apple's priorities are clearly iPhone, then watch, then Mac, then iPad.
Casey:
If you were Tim, how would you rank them?
Casey:
Well, if I were Tim, I would put Mac first, but that's not the way this works.
Casey:
I think the most reasonable approach is iPhone, then iPad, then watch, then Mac.
Casey:
And that doesn't please me to say that.
Casey:
I don't want it to be that way, but I think that's the way that makes the most sense.
Casey:
Marco?
Marco:
I would probably try to restructure the company and the management incentives such that it was not necessary to rank them like this.
Casey:
That's such a non-answer.
John:
I don't think that's really possible unless you break it off into subsidiaries that are... I don't know.
John:
I think that's dodging.
Marco:
I think you should still... Okay.
Marco:
If I have to rank them... I hate...
Marco:
Anyway, if I had to rank them, iPhone would still be first.
Marco:
I would put Mac second, iPad third, and watch fourth because that's basically the order in which... I think it's the order of their importance along with the order in which the amount of attention they need, basically.
Marco:
The watch is brand new and fairly young.
Marco:
But it doesn't actually do that much.
Marco:
It's a fairly simple product.
Marco:
I don't think it needs a ton of updating.
Marco:
Especially with 3.0, it was pretty good.
Marco:
They've gotten to a good spot now.
Marco:
It's not really dying for tons of updates.
Marco:
The iPad gets a lot of stuff for free, which just advances on the iPhone.
Marco:
So it doesn't need a lot of its own attention.
Marco:
It doesn't also justify all of its own attention because the sales aren't that good.
Marco:
Whereas the Mac, the reason I put it second to the iPhone is not only...
Marco:
Obviously, do I love it, but also I think the Mac needs more attention and has more influence and it's more of a foundational important part of the whole market.
John:
John?
John:
All right.
John:
I would go iPhone, iPad, Mac, watch, although I think this list is not complete and I'm not entirely sure that the order given is so clearly Apple's priorities.
John:
We all read an iPhone first because I think that's just a gimme.
John:
The reason I'm putting iPad second is...
John:
is because I think it has the potential... It's the only thing in Apple's lineup that has the potential to eventually someday do all the things that the Mac does.
John:
And the watch is so young and so new, it should not have priority over the iPad or the Mac or the iPhone.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Also, the Apple TV is missing from this list.
Marco:
There are some things Apple does that aren't here.
John:
That's what I'm saying.
Marco:
It's not complete.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But I would also say the Apple TV is similar to the watch in that I'm not sure it justifies a lot of...
Marco:
continuous investment because the reason why the apple tv and the watch and the ipad actually the what holds these things back is not just like software features or hardware updates it's like ecosystem limitations around them that just make it very difficult for them to to meaningfully progress
Casey:
Dan Caspi asks, do all of your wives listen to the episodes?
Casey:
Do they find them interesting?
Casey:
Erin does not.
Casey:
She does listen to analog.
Casey:
She does not listen to ATP.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Tiff listens to ATP.
Marco:
She does not listen to Under the Radar.
Marco:
And she's in top four.
Yeah.
John:
John.
John:
Yes, my wife listens to ATP.
John:
I don't think she finds it interesting in terms of the subject matter.
John:
I think the only reason she finds it interesting is because her husband is on the show and she wants to hear if we say anything about her.
Casey:
Thanks.
Casey:
Hi, Tina.
Casey:
Have you ever rejected an ad?
Marco:
This is still from Dan Caspi.
Marco:
There are lots of reasons for this.
Marco:
Obviously, there's a lot of stuff that just we don't think would be nice to advertise here or would not fit the show well.
Marco:
Sometimes we will drop a sponsor that we've had if we get reports from people that their product isn't as good as we thought it was.
Marco:
We also, strategically, we've tried to reduce the amount of clothing companies and stuff like that that advertise with us and increase more of the tech-relevant stuff.
Marco:
there's tons of sponsors out there that want to sell you a shirt subscription.
Marco:
And that's fine.
Marco:
I mean, look, last episode, we had a sock subscription.
Marco:
It was pretty fun.
Marco:
It was a great spot.
Marco:
But I don't want the advertisers to all be that kind of stuff because we're still a tech show.
Marco:
So I want to have some kind of focus to make most of the ads tech-related.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's take a break.
Casey:
And speaking of sponsors, let's talk about one of the ones that is awesome.
Casey:
It's a shirt subscription.
Yeah.
Casey:
No, it's a mattress.
Casey:
That'd be great.
Casey:
That'd be so great, though.
John:
Mattresses are totally tech-related.
John:
Everybody sleeps.
John:
Sometimes.
Marco:
It's a good sponsor, too.
Marco:
I mean, that's what makes it a hard decision.
Marco:
A lot of these are great products, so we usually won't drop them just for that.
Marco:
But one thing that bugs me, just very quickly, one thing that really bugs me is things that are subscriptions that really don't need to be that you're probably not going to benefit from them being subscriptions.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
I don't mind like a sock, a one pair of socks a month kind of thing because like, you know, you're going to use socks.
Marco:
That's cool.
Marco:
What I don't like are things that are like bags of snacks for, you know, you pay 40 bucks a month and get some bags of snacks delivered.
Marco:
It's like, I don't, that just feels like it shouldn't be a subscription.
Marco:
You know, or like there's one that like, you know, you can like get dog toys delivered for 30 bucks a month.
Marco:
It's like,
Marco:
i i buy toys for my dog every time i went to the dog store i would never reach 30 bucks a month worth of total investment in that like it's crazy but yeah it's like certain things like i i will i will outright reject just because like i think that's bs to be a subscription um but yeah so anyway
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Casper, an obsessively engineered mattress at a shockingly fair price.
Marco:
Go to casper.com slash ATP and use code ATP for $50 towards your mattress.
Marco:
Casper created one perfect mattress sold directly to consumers, eliminating commission-driven and inflated prices.
Marco:
The award-winning Casper mattress was developed in-house by their engineers, has a sleek design, and is delivered in a remarkably small box.
Marco:
You can get it up narrow staircases if you need to.
Marco:
And now...
Marco:
In addition to the mattress, Casper also offers an adaptive pillow and soft, breathable sheets.
Marco:
The mattress industry, let's face it.
Marco:
I mean, if you go into a mattress store, you've got to weirdly walk around while there's some salesman hovering over you.
Marco:
Try to lie down on a mattress for three seconds and be like, okay, I guess I want to spend a third of my life on this.
Marco:
That's not a great way to buy a mattress.
Marco:
And the prices are really, really high.
Marco:
And it's high-pressure sales because they're usually commission-driven.
Marco:
It's not a great system for consumers.
Marco:
Casper has flipped all this on its head.
Marco:
The mattress industry, they don't even know what to do about Casper.
Marco:
They're freaking out probably.
Marco:
They should be at least.
Marco:
Casper is revolutionizing the industry.
Marco:
They cut the cost of dealing with these resellers and showrooms and pass that savings directly on to you.
Marco:
Now, their mattress was developed with thousands of hours of their in-house engineering team time.
Marco:
It is an amazing combination of springy latex foam and supportive memory foam for just the right sink and just the right bounce.
Marco:
And this is a breathable design that, unlike pure memory foam, this helps you feel cool.
Marco:
It doesn't surround you with heat and constant too much heat like the way memory foam can for a lot of people.
Marco:
so you can regulate your temperature properly throughout the night and all this is available for a shockingly fair price and normally a really nice mattress you're going to pay about two thousand dollars for it really casper five hundred dollars for a twin six hundred for twin xl 750 for a full 850 for a queen and just 950 for a king this is really about half the price of what you're going to pay for most mattresses of this quality and all these mattresses by casper are made in america
Marco:
They've also, you know, they've taken the problem of like, how do you know whether you're going to like it or not?
Marco:
You know, you're not going to just like line it in the store for three minutes.
Marco:
Also, buying it online obviously sounds crazy, too.
Marco:
So they've taken care of you with this.
Marco:
It is completely risk free.
Marco:
You can try it with free delivery and free returns with home pickup if you don't like it with a hundred night home trial.
Marco:
So if you don't love it, you have a hundred guys to decide that and they will pick it up at your house and give you a full refund if you, if you want to send it back.
Marco:
It is easy.
Marco:
And we've had, we've had people tell us they love it and they keep it and it's awesome.
Marco:
We've also had a few people write in to say, you know what?
Marco:
It wasn't for me and the return process was amazing.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
so either way you win it's totally risk-free casper understands how important this is to really truly sleep on it so you know whether it's right for you or not so check it out today get yours today try it for a hundred nights in your own home with free delivery and free painless returns completely risk-free go to casper.com slash atp and use code atp for fifty dollars towards your mattress thank you very much to casper for sponsoring our show so
Casey:
Kyle Janot asks, I was wondering if there's been any new tool, software, or hardware that you've started using in 2016 at work or at home that you think deserves a shout out or additional recognition.
Casey:
This is a fantastic question to which I can't think of any good answer.
Casey:
And that's unfortunate.
John:
That's the system working as designed because if you can't think of it in a couple seconds, you have to pass.
Marco:
Yep, that's a pass.
Marco:
I'm going to go with Git submodules and especially using them.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
It's crazy.
Marco:
This is not the holiday party talking.
Marco:
This is like real.
Marco:
And using them in particular with the Git Tower app for the Mac.
Marco:
I think it's just called Tower now, the Tower app for the Mac.
Casey:
Oh, that is fantastic.
Casey:
I love Tower.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So I use, I mean, I have, I have tried many things over the years to, to basically try to solve like, how do I import other libraries, either written by myself or like open source projects into, you know, how do I import shared code into my apps and manage that?
Marco:
And there's things like Cocoa pods and that kind of dependency manager.
Marco:
And there's also obviously methods like just copy the directory over and stick it in your project.
Marco:
And there's, there's get sub trees and sub modules that,
Marco:
I have no idea why those are two different things.
Marco:
Uh, please don't write into emailing to explain it.
Marco:
I don't care, but, um, thank you anyway.
Marco:
But, um, I have, I recently settled on sub modules, um, especially as managed by get tower, uh, this wonderful Mac app that I love so much because it's just called tower.
Marco:
Oops.
Marco:
Um, and, uh,
Marco:
It is finally a system that I'm sticking with and that I'm very happy with.
Marco:
And I've stuck with it now for a while.
Marco:
I think it's been at least six months, which is probably the longest I've used one of these systems and not hated it.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
I have lots of my own shared libraries in here.
Marco:
It's wonderful.
Marco:
And it's overall, while it is not perfect, and while the raw Git way to do submodules is comically obtuse, just like most of Git...
Marco:
When you manage it with a GUI tool, it's not too bad.
Marco:
And it is by far the lowest hassle and least fragile of these systems that I've ever used.
Casey:
That makes me think I have been fighting CocoaPods left and right at work lately.
Marco:
Yeah, you don't need to.
Marco:
Just stop.
Marco:
I'm telling you, it's so much better this way.
Casey:
I'm not convinced submodules is the right answer.
Casey:
However, I'm really interested in Punic, which is a clean room re-implementation of Carthage done by Schwa on Twitter.
Casey:
God, I forgot his name off the top of my head.
Casey:
Holy crap.
Casey:
What a pleasant person.
Casey:
Well, there's that.
Casey:
But anyway, I've understood that Punic is very good, and I'd love to try it.
Casey:
And so I can't say that that is definitely my answer.
Casey:
Jonathan White, that's right.
Casey:
Thank you, Sam the Geek.
Casey:
Anyway, I would love to give Punic a shot, though.
Casey:
John.
John:
I mostly have to take a pass on this, but when I read the question, I realized in the letter of the question, I do have a thing, you know, a new tool, software, hardware that you've started using in 2016 that you think deserve a shout out.
John:
I think the much faster Touch ID that the entire world has been using for a year and a half is awesome.
John:
And I love the fact that my iPhone 7 unlocked so quickly.
John:
It's like magic is really, it is the, I think it's the most significant change on the iPhone 7 that I've appreciated.
John:
Maybe second to the speed.
John:
Fair enough.
John:
In general.
Casey:
Chris Shamloo asks, for Casey and John, any desire to become independent?
Casey:
Desire, yes.
Casey:
Strength of soul, strength of character, probably not.
Casey:
I recognize that having a jobby job is...
Casey:
Not really any more stable than having a completely independent lifestyle, but it feels more stable and has health insurance.
Casey:
And so right now, I really like my job.
Casey:
I've been there since February.
Casey:
I really, really like it, and I don't plan to leave, but we'll see what happens.
Casey:
John.
John:
My answer is similar.
John:
Desire, yes, but a much larger helping of fear.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
For Marco, still from Chris, any desire to start a company, something with more than three or four employees?
Marco:
Nope, not even a little.
Marco:
I am terrible at managing people.
Marco:
I don't enjoy managing people.
Marco:
I really don't enjoy the idea of having to manage investors, which that would probably require.
Marco:
And so, nope, I'm very happy limiting myself to just what I can do on my own.
Casey:
fair enough uh for all of us uh who would win a 100 meter sprint maybe me but quite possibly john and in a 5k race i have no idea you guys the 100 meter i'm i don't i don't know i'd like i'm not good at sprinting so i would probably have to give that one to casey 5k i would win
Casey:
I think that's probably fair.
Casey:
Why are 3D movies terrible?
Casey:
Because it's just a gimmick.
Casey:
Marco, any thoughts?
Marco:
I have never seen one, so I can't answer.
Marco:
Oh, you're better off that way.
Marco:
That's the best Marco answer ever.
Marco:
Are you surprised?
Marco:
Is there really that much of a surprise?
John:
Why are talkies terrible?
John:
I can tell you why they're terrible.
John:
Tell us.
John:
I mean, terrible, whatever.
John:
The problem with 3D movies is...
John:
When we see the world with our two eyeballs, we can choose what to focus on.
John:
3D movies, you can't do that.
John:
3D movies choose what to focus on for you.
John:
So they have the 3D effect where it seems like things are closer to you and farther away.
John:
But if you decide to look at the background, it doesn't suddenly come into focus.
John:
And so it's not like the real world we experience, but it's also not a flat picture like a regular movie.
John:
And so it's this uncomfortable middle ground that I personally find terrible.
Casey:
that is an annoyingly good answer dream five car garage god i wish i had looked at this before the show parentheses one million dollar budget i'm like well which is it i think it's let's let's say the best five cars you can buy for a million or less yeah you gotta just rattle them off this is lightning round come on all right so um aston martin dbs that's what like a
Casey:
quarter million two hundred thousand uh jeep wrangler uh and no i'm serious i'm really serious they're they're impossible to have your turn uh uh so aston martin dbs jeep wrangler uh bmw m3 uh porsche cayenne turbo that's i think i think you're over you know you're am i over budget probably
John:
No way.
John:
I would say stay within budget and just stop short when you're done with when you use it up.
Casey:
No way.
Casey:
The DBS is like, let's call it 200.
Casey:
No, 200.
John:
What are you kidding?
John:
I think you need to price that out.
John:
All right, fine.
John:
I'll just call it.
John:
The Porsche probably has like 90K in options alone.
That's true.
Yeah.
Casey:
All right, well, I'll just stop at four then.
Casey:
All right, let's go to John since I feel like I've been going to Marco first for a lot.
Casey:
So, John, let's go to you next.
John:
I'm going to say Ferrari 488, Ferrari 458.
John:
There's a surprise.
John:
Used BMW M3, the E46 generation, the one that I like.
John:
Whoa, whoa, slow down.
John:
Why?
John:
Why?
Marco:
because that's the m3 that i like i like how it looks uh i don't like how the new ones look but i want that i want that type of car and mercedes s-class really okay marco uh i go tesla 100d if that doesn't exist yet p100d number two would be aston martin whatever aston martin is cool and sexy i don't keep track of which ones they are it's the two-door one though not the crazy four-door abomination
Marco:
um so yeah one of those of course and um some kind of like small simple stick shift two-door car whether it's a cayenne i mean sorry whether that's a cayman sorry oh my god so major apologies whether that's a cayman or an m2 it's probably one of those uh you know and then the other two spots i would just leave like i'd fill spots one three and five and just leave spots two and four empty just have room because i love a garage with a
Marco:
space to walk around the cars because i don't have that and i've never i've only ever had very crowded garages in my life so like to have space would be an amazing luxury you don't know crowded garages you truth be told i do not have a cavernous garage but both marco and john have tiny garages mine is by far the smallest also i want to change my answer i forgot the model s i would throw one in there if i have budget left
Casey:
Yeah, that's a good call.
Casey:
That's a good call.
Casey:
Prodance.f says, what is the best TV show movie podcast of 2016?
Casey:
I feel like I should have an answer for this.
Casey:
It's ours.
Casey:
Come on.
Casey:
Yeah, totally.
Casey:
Actually, you know what?
Casey:
I think it was in 2016 that I discovered 99% Invisible, which I know everyone else on the planet has been listening to for years.
Casey:
But I really love 99% Invisible, and I just discovered it this year.
Casey:
So that'll be my answer.
Casey:
John.
John:
We go to Marco.
John:
Marco hasn't seen any TV shows, movies, or podcasts in 2016.
Marco:
I saw Star Wars.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
And the new, I saw Dory, the Finding Dory thing with my kid.
Marco:
I wouldn't put it as the best.
John:
I'm not going to do best one of each because that'll turn into a comparable episode.
John:
I'm just going to say best TV show.
John:
My memory is so short, so I could be forgetting something important, but Westworld is the most recent in my mind.
John:
I think it's my favorite TV show of this year.
John:
And podcast, who knows?
John:
And movie, who knows?
Marco:
Marco.
Marco:
I think my favorite podcast of the year might be Upgrade.
Marco:
It's the show with Jason Snell and Mike Hurley, and it's basically like a tech commentary show not too different from this.
Marco:
They just do a really, really good job of it.
Marco:
So I'm a big fan of that overall.
Marco:
And I would say...
Marco:
Kind of my favorite new podcast recently, even though that wasn't part of the question, is Due by Friday by Merlin Mann, Max Temkin, and Alex Cox.
Marco:
It is so incredibly funny.
Marco:
It's pretty new still.
Marco:
They're only like four or five episodes in.
Marco:
But my God, is it funny.
Marco:
It's just amazing.
Marco:
So that is a perfect show.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Still from Prodan.
Casey:
How do you usually pick gifts for your loved ones?
Casey:
Are you good gift givers?
Casey:
I feel like every third or fourth year I do really well, and the rest of the time I'm a frigging disaster.
Casey:
Marco?
Marco:
Not too much better.
Marco:
About the same.
Marco:
The main problem is that Tiff and I, we will buy each other cool things throughout the whole year.
Marco:
So when it comes time for a holiday, it's often like, well, I was impatient two months ago and bought you this thing for Happy Wednesday.
Marco:
And now there's nothing left.
John:
John.
John:
I am a terrible gift giver.
John:
And how do I pick gifts badly in desperation?
John:
Hopefully with help.
John:
It's a disaster.
John:
Totally.
Marco:
You are an impressively bad gift receiver as well.
John:
Yes.
John:
It's amazing.
Marco:
I would abolish all the whole gifting thing.
Marco:
I hope my gift, my wish for the world is that all of you get a chance to at some point witness John Syracuse opening presents.
John:
You're the one who gave me a prank gift of a giant thing of Sprite.
John:
So prank gifts I feel like I receive with ill manner appropriately.
Marco:
But even the real gift that you opened up before and after that, it was something to see.
Casey:
It's true.
Casey:
All right, moving on.
Casey:
Johnny Cirillo says, John Syracuse is a pioneer in podcasting and podcast format.
Casey:
Among other touchstones like each OS X review, CGP Grey has said that he is one of his podcasting heroes.
Casey:
marco armand has a reputation from co-founding tumblr to being the independent app developer and able to be independent because of the app store casey list approaches the trio from the opposite end i'm not sure if that's good or bad where his friendship with marco has exposed his talents on the show itself okay good how have each of you managed this fame-like stature reputation and independence of a show as great as atp well thank you
Casey:
are their predecessors each of you have learned from.
Casey:
I will start.
Casey:
My predecessors are Marco Arment and John Syracuse, and I say that both to blow smoke up their butts and also because it's actually true.
Casey:
Getting warm in you?
Casey:
I was a jackal.
Casey:
I was a jackal in the 5x5 chat room.
Casey:
I genuinely loved both of their shows.
Casey:
It was both of their shows that got me into podcasts, and I really, really mean that.
Casey:
I've certainly admire many, many, many, many, many other podcasters like Mike Hurley and Jason Snell of Upgrade, like Stephen Hackett as some examples.
Casey:
But it was John and Marco that really got me into podcasts.
Casey:
And so I really appreciate the two of them.
Casey:
Marco.
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, I basically... I have learned a lot from other podcasters, people like the You Look Nice Today people.
Marco:
That was a very, very strong influence on me and my style, my editing style also early on.
Marco:
They're way better than me at it, but that's kind of who I'm imitating a lot of the time.
Marco:
I've also learned a lot from earlier podcast pioneers in this space, people like Dan Benjamin, John Gruber, and...
Marco:
And as Relay and Mike and Steven and the crowd over there have really developed way bigger and wider than a lot of us can do with just one or two shows here and there, I'm learning a lot from what they're doing as well.
Marco:
And outside of the immediate podcasting ecosystem, I also learned a lot from Howard Stern.
Marco:
I listened a lot to that as a young adult.
Marco:
I don't listen much anymore because we basically can't listen whenever our kid's around, which is increasingly frequently.
Marco:
So I don't listen a lot anymore, but I did learn a lot from Howard Stern's style, not like the sex stuff, but just his general speaking style, his impatience for boringness, although I didn't learn enough of that, and some of the ways he does things and some of his principles.
John:
john yeah i don't know i should have uh thought about this question more beforehand there's so many influences like a list but i always go back to the one like the my main my there's a singular main podcasting influence that made me understand what podcasts were as a as a medium as a format or not you know that they are a thing and also made me believe that it's a thing that i can do which are the two
John:
That's Mer Lafferty, who used to do a podcast.
John:
She does a whole bunch of podcasts for people who want to be fiction writers.
John:
And she eventually became...
John:
a fiction writer and has written several novels now and so she's had this whole big arc through that whole series and she does a whole bunch of other podcasts uh people in a similar market and you know i was uh a writer uh mostly doing technical writing online in those days i wasn't writing fiction but i like hearing podcasts about writing and just hearing her do a podcast it's just her in front of a microphone the podcast i should be writing sitting in front of a microphone in her house talking
John:
I don't know how many hours that I listened to.
John:
And I thought that podcast was great.
John:
And I thought she was great.
John:
And I thought podcasts were great.
John:
And I thought, you know, I have things to say.
John:
I could say them into a microphone in my house, too.
John:
So I'll be eternally grateful to Merle Lafferty.
John:
Nice.
Casey:
Daniel Peters asks, I was wondering what each of you considered your favorite Apple product was that was released this year.
Casey:
I was thinking about this earlier, actually.
Casey:
And because it's our show and in part my show, I'm going to cheat and use two Apple products.
Casey:
I freaking love the AirPods and I freaking love my iPhone 7.
Casey:
Yes, there's problems with both.
Casey:
But truth be told, I really, really love both of these products.
Casey:
I think the iPhone 7 is my favorite iPhone ever, in part because I didn't get Plus.
Casey:
And the AirPods are really phenomenal.
Casey:
So I really like both of those.
John:
john i'm gonna go iphone 7 too like i already talked about the the one feature but yeah that's first of all apple didn't release that much this year that i had contact with and i as much as i like the airpods my new iphone is definitely my favorite apple thing that they release this year yeah i'm gonna go iphone 7 overall especially in particular the jet black finish iphone 7 because
Marco:
The actual upgrade to the internals was a fairly minor upgrade from the 6S, but the exterior change with that jet black finish is substantial.
Marco:
It changes the way the phone feels and makes it able to be used without a case for a lot of people, including me.
Marco:
That's a pretty big change.
Marco:
I'm also going to give honorable mention to the 9.7 inch iPad Pro, which I don't use it to its full extent a ton, but I do use it very often.
Marco:
It is my kitchen iPad and it is my main podcast player in the house while doing things.
Marco:
So I'm using it frequently.
Marco:
And no matter how much or how little you use your iPad, the 9.7 inch iPad Pro is awesome.
Marco:
in my opinion unquestionably the best ipad ever made it is better than they usually are even like you know you can always say like oh this year this ipad was the best one ever made but i think the 9.7 pro is especially like especially clear and unambiguously a great update and just an awesome product all around and there are basically no downsides to it that aren't that don't apply to every ipad and there's tons of upsides to it so 9.7 x ipad is a home run
Casey:
omar benami says i would really like to hear how you do backup or share your photos and your processing routines i wrote another challenge i wrote a blog post about this we'll link it in the show notes boom marco uh backup is a super duper clone a time machine share on my synology and backblaze
Marco:
um sharing photos and processing routines is a whole different question um i oh wait this is sorry i misplaced the slash in the way i uh parsed the sentence this is about i thought it was two different questions about how do you back up period and then also how do you share your photos yeah
Casey:
That's not how I read it.
Casey:
I read it as, how do you back up slash share your photos?
Casey:
But it could be either way.
Casey:
It could be either way.
Marco:
Anyway, that's how I back up.
Marco:
My photos are included in the backup, so that covers that.
Marco:
And my photo processing is still a mess and still in flux, but the system I've used for the last six months or so, or year, or whatever it's been...
Marco:
Everything on the phone stays in Photos app on all platforms.
Marco:
Everything shot on a camera goes to Lightroom first.
Marco:
I pick and process and edit in Lightroom, and then I export finished JPEGs into Photos where they will live forever.
John:
All right, John.
John:
So, let's see.
John:
For backups, all my photos are in a photo library on the 5K iMac.
John:
That 5K iMac in its entirety is backed up to Time Machine, both locally and on my Synology and also through CrashPlan.
John:
I also push the photos up to Google Photos as well.
John:
So my photos are in many places.
John:
For sharing, we use the iCloud library sharing.
John:
What the hell is it called?
John:
It used to be PhotoStreams.
John:
What is it called now?
Casey:
iCloud PhotoLibrary.
John:
No, the sharing feature, like when you want to share.
John:
Anyway, we use the iCloud sharing feature because all of our family have iOS devices and they get a little notification and they can go and look at it.
John:
So that's how we do sharing and processing.
John:
Everything goes, you know, we connect the camera to the 5K iMac.
John:
It's on my wife's account.
John:
So her phone stuff automatically shows up there for everything that's on my phone.
John:
It goes to my Mac and photos.
John:
And periodically, in fact, I just did this recently.
John:
Periodically, I do a export unmodified originals from my Mac.
Casey:
to a folder and then import that folder into the big photos library to make the i the iCloud family photo library that apple refuses to make nice uh to be clear my uh backup is crash plan the only reason i don't use backblaze is because backblaze doesn't easily support uh network drives if it wasn't for that i would absolutely be on backblaze tomorrow
John:
That's the same reason I do it, because we mount the Synology on my wife's 5K iMac, and because it's a network share, Crash Band will back it up.
John:
My personal Mac is backed up with Backblaze.
Casey:
There you go.
Casey:
Ryan Goodlett asks, what's the most difficult challenge or transition that you've had in your professional life?
Casey:
I'm going to go here again with a twofer.
Casey:
I think, number one, my last job, I got a deserved reputation for being a complainer.
Casey:
I think I did too much complaining, not enough fixing, and it was challenging but rewarding to move away from that.
Casey:
And similarly, I was doing something that I was very comfortable in doing my last job.
Casey:
And now I'm doing iOS development, which I am comfortable in, but I certainly wasn't when I started.
Casey:
And so that was very challenging and very difficult, but I'm glad I've done it.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
This is going to be a ridiculous humble brag, and I apologize for that in advance.
Marco:
And that is the transition to having a large enough audience and enough influence that when I write something, it spreads often a lot more than I anticipated.
Marco:
And there are ramifications to that.
Marco:
And so I've basically had to learn how to responsibly have...
Marco:
kind of audience and not get myself into trouble or situations that I personally regret or that explode in my face unexpectedly.
Marco:
And I have not completed this transition or process yet.
Marco:
But I am slowly learning basically how to responsibly have the audience that I now have.
Casey:
I think that was a really good answer, actually.
John:
John?
John:
I did read this beforehand, and I haven't had a little trouble picking, but I guess probably the best one is I was working in college.
John:
I was working in, like, tech, you know, in the industry and doing, you know, because that was the advent of the web, so I was getting into that, but I also worked at, like, you know, the IT help desk and stuff like that.
John:
And anyway, I transitioned right from, you know, I got my first job out of college.
John:
I got it kind of when I was in college and then just kept it afterwards, but then I moved away.
John:
And so...
John:
I was telecommuting for that job.
John:
I thought it was great.
John:
I love telecommuting.
John:
But in hindsight, that was a very difficult transition because I had to go all through all the things that I imagine anybody who works from home has to go through where you are responsible for your own time.
John:
And, you know, you need to, you know, anything that anyone is independent or works from home otherwise has to deal with.
John:
I dealt with that in my very first job and.
John:
Like so many people on this very podcast, my problem was not motivating myself to work.
John:
My problem was having any kind of reasonable work-life balance.
John:
Like, I didn't have kids then, but I was newly married, but I spent way, way too much time.
John:
Like, it was like every waking second, I was...
John:
on the computer most of the time doing work related things and that's when i got in big trouble with rsi issues and it could have been career ending and it was very difficult and just learning how to be a human being with a balance between work and non-work it was especially difficult after coming off of college where for the first time i had access to the internet on you know an ethernet connection not a modem like i was on the actual internet and like i spent you know again
John:
Every second that I wasn't in class, I was glued to some kind of X term or other terminal or whatever in the computer lab.
John:
That wasn't a healthy balance either.
John:
But that was probably the most difficult.
John:
And after that, I think I've more or less figured out that aspect of my professional life, balancing the life part with the work part.
Casey:
Brant Ronge asks, if you could force Apple to enter one product category they're not currently in, which would it be?
Casey:
The pro desktop business doesn't count yet.
Casey:
You know, I might get dinged for this, but I'd like to see Apple do a standalone camera.
Casey:
And I know, yes, that the iPhone particularly has a really great camera, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
But I'd be really interested to see an Apple standalone camera.
Casey:
And I know they did that years and years and years ago, back when John was a Mac user.
Casey:
It would be interesting to see it today.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
This is a hard one for me to pick because my answer mostly is stuff they already do, but just do it better.
Marco:
But if I had to pick one, I would say I would like to see them address the Echo slash Google Home market.
Marco:
But the problem with that is that I don't honestly think Siri is good enough for that yet, and I also don't think Apple would do any kind of integrations with third-party APIs and stuff that would make it as useful as the Echo is.
Marco:
So basically, I want Apple to either make their current products better, or if they're going to enter a new market, the only one I can think of is one they'd be bad at, which is probably not a good sign.
John:
John?
John:
I'm going to pick a gigantic desktop touchscreen thing that's plugged into the wall, basically a Microsoft Surface Studio.
John:
Oh, interesting.
John:
Because they're not in that market.
John:
And like Marco, I can think of all sorts of things that I would like them to do, but then I feel like they wouldn't do a good job at it.
John:
I think they could do a good job of this if they put their minds to it.
Casey:
Buckalomas asks, does anyone in the ATP group use a stand-up desk?
Casey:
Not at home, but at work I use a VeriDesk, which is the standard issue corporate sit-stand desk add-on, and I love it.
Casey:
I can't recommend it enough.
Casey:
It's very spendy, which is why work got it for me, and I don't have one at home, but I really, really, really like it.
Casey:
If you are to get one, though...
Casey:
Absolutely get a mat, and I have a recommendation for one, so ask me on Twitter if you need one.
Casey:
Put it in the show notes, because I want it too, actually.
Marco:
I have a stand-in desk that I stole from Tumblr when I left, and it's a very nice one.
Marco:
It was sold through some kind of office furniture company back almost 10 years ago.
Marco:
uh i have no you know i'm sure the market is totally different now but one thing i i don't use it in standing mode a lot i i have gone through phases where i have like if i had you know certain uh back inflammation like like disc inflammation in my back i would go through phases where i'd use it in standing mode for like you know almost permanently for months and then go back to sitting um so it is nice to have the option it's also wonderful when routing cables and doing cable management cleanup in the back to just lift it up a little bit and have that that kind of headroom literally
Marco:
Um, but one thing I'd recommend if you get a standing desk, my, my biggest recommendation is get one that has, uh, memories for the different positions that it can, like at least two memories.
Marco:
So you can have at least a stored seating height and a stored standing height.
Marco:
Um, because otherwise it's, it's frustrating to like have to be fidgeting with it to get it just right every time you change it.
Marco:
So if you have memory presets, you can just set it where you like it and then just always repeat the same two levels.
John:
John?
John:
Never worked on a standing desk.
John:
I would try it.
John:
I'm interested in trying it, but I never have.
John:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Also, quick real-time follow-up.
Casey:
John Chidgy, friend of the show, asks, how often do I use it in standing mode?
Casey:
Usually every day.
Casey:
Not always, but usually every day for probably a quarter of the day.
Casey:
uh phil chatham asks although atp is sponsor supported have you ever considered member donations aside from merchandise we've talked about this but maybe not on a published show um we've considered it but quite candidly i don't think it would ever come close to to to earning as much money as a sponsorship would any thoughts from either of you guys
Marco:
I mean, our sponsorships make good money.
Marco:
One of the things I learned from Howard Stern, which I mentioned before, so I'll just go over briefly, is that he said on a number of occasions basically that he likes to minimize the times and ways in which he asks the audience for money.
Marco:
um because that way when you do ask them for money or you know it basically makes it count and you're not like wasting that goodwill all the time unnecessarily you're not nickel and diming your audience and everything so basically we try to make this you know we sell t-shirts like once a year for wbdc usually or near it at least and um
Marco:
and and and we you know we have you listen to a show with sponsorships and so far those are the only ways we really ask you for money ever uh and that that works for us we make good money from the sponsorships anything else i think would not only bring in a lot less money than the sponsorships would but would also kind of cloud the message and kind of make it feel like we are like i don't know double charging you or asking you too often
Casey:
Yeah, I completely agree.
Casey:
Charles Hart asks, which Apple exec is your favorite?
Casey:
Which one?
Casey:
Well, I guess this is multi parts.
Casey:
Let's start there with which Apple exec is your favorite.
Casey:
I do love me some Phil Schiller.
Casey:
He's he's goofy in the best possible way.
Casey:
Although God now I'm thinking about Craig.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm gonna have to change my mind.
Casey:
I'm gonna have to go with Craig.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
if it's if it's about like public interaction i think i have to go with phil because phil is he has he he is so gloriously dry and like it that that shows itself in weird ways sometimes because he's he's like he seems like he's a nice person but to get him to show genuine enthusiasm for anything is is seemingly not very easy
Marco:
And he just has an impressive level of dryness about him that I really enjoy, even when you can just kind of barely see it through the marketing message.
Marco:
The Mario Run announcement email that I posted on Twitter, it was the most dry, unexcited email I've ever seen from a promotional effort.
Marco:
And that just had Phil Schiller all over it.
Marco:
He probably had something to do with the authorship of that.
Marco:
But I think...
Marco:
If you look at activity of whose work I like the best, that's got to be Craig.
Marco:
Fair enough.
Marco:
John.
John:
Leave it to Marco to pick two.
John:
Fine.
Casey:
I kind of did too.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I feel the same way about Phil, but I got to go with CFED because he gave me my file system.
Casey:
Well done, both of you.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Next from Charles Hart.
Casey:
Which one leaving Apple would be the saddest?
Casey:
I'm going to absolutely go with Phil on this one.
Casey:
John?
Marco:
Yeah, Phil, definitely.
Marco:
I'd go Craig on that one.
Marco:
I think if Craig left, that would be... As much as I like Phil, I'd be upset if either of them leave.
Marco:
I'd be a lot more upset, I think, if Craig left because I feel like that would represent so much more
Marco:
of what I care about being gone from the company.
Casey:
Anyone who you'd think leaving would actually be a net win.
Casey:
I'm going to pass on that.
Casey:
That's mean.
Casey:
Yeah, that's mean.
Casey:
John?
John:
I don't know enough about the inner workings of the company to say.
Casey:
fair enough oh that's cold not a bad answer though uh andrew dirk says all of you primarily use apple devices or products what two or three non-apple products that each of you what are two or three non-apple products that each of you use on a regular basis this is a great great question um i don't know if i can do two or three just list them don't describe why they're good
Casey:
But one that I can think of off the top of my head that I absolutely freaking love and have loved for years now is my Synology, which, to be fair, was sent to me for free.
Casey:
But I swear to God, I love this thing.
Casey:
And if I knew then how much I would love it, I would absolutely have paid my own money to buy it.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
Almost all of my audio gear is non-Apple.
Marco:
And all of my cameras, except for my iPhone, which admittedly is a frequently used one.
Marco:
Yeah, camera is a good one.
Marco:
But those are all non-Apple as well.
Marco:
And audio in and out, microphone interface, headphone amp, headphones, because the AirPods don't fit me.
Marco:
So keep that list going.
Marco:
I'm also a huge fan of my Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner, which is incredibly boring, but incredibly satisfying because it works so well.
Ha ha ha.
Casey:
I would also pile on on the camera one.
Casey:
That was a great answer.
Casey:
John?
John:
I'm going to go with my Panasonic Plasma television, which I still love.
John:
My Sony PlayStation 4 Pro, which I love and play every day, including just before this show.
John:
Finally finished out the SRL record book from last year.
John:
I still kept it around because I knew I would finally complete it.
John:
What else?
John:
My Synology, just like Casey said, with all of the exactly the same caveats.
John:
If my Synology broke and I think about it breaking all the time, I would absolutely buy a new one in a second.
John:
In fact, I've been thinking about buying a new one just to get all the new cool one.
John:
I'm looking at my Synology and saying, you're old and your discs are small.
John:
Let me buy a new one.
John:
But it's still working fine, so I'm not going to plunk down that money.
John:
You know you can put different discs in, right?
John:
i know but this i don't think mine supports btrfs and oh god the the new ones have faster chips for transcoding for plex stuff and yes i could replace the discs but then what am i going to do with all these gigantic discs lord knows i can't put them inside a mac anymore sick burn all right charles hunt asks if the mac excuse me if the imac pro became a reality what components and configurations would justify the pro label to you
Casey:
That's a great question.
Casey:
I think just an absurd amount of RAM, an absurd amount of hard drive space, which isn't, I mean, I shouldn't call them a hard drive anymore, an SSD space, and a really, really beefy graphics card.
Casey:
I think the graphics card alone might be enough.
Casey:
John?
John:
i need i think i would justify to me i think i need ecc ram i don't need xeons but i need ecc ram uh tons of ram and big honking graphics card like so the cpu is is you would expect me to list that but i'm not gonna i would say like whatever ecc ram and i don't know like you know intel may not have those combination of parts available but technically it is possible ecc ram uh and really fast graphics card
Marco:
And you didn't need to have CPUs because you knew I would cover them.
Marco:
So I'm going to go with basically two things that are related.
Marco:
Basically, they require each other.
Marco:
I'm going to go with both high core Xeon.
Marco:
So like basically more than four cores.
Marco:
Give me at least double, at least eight cores.
Marco:
Because that matters and I will use that.
Marco:
And then also, which should be required to do that in the first place, give me a cooling enclosure that can have the computer under very, very high workloads and still be silent in the room.
Marco:
Because the trash can Mac Pro can do that.
Marco:
The old Mac Pros almost did that.
Marco:
And the iMac and all the laptops and everything they make today except for the MacBook One cannot do that.
Marco:
Every other computer they make under load, you hear fans.
Marco:
And I want a computer that is advanced and graceful enough to have 160-watt CPU in there and to have me never hear the fan in a regular room in regular conditions when it's under maximum load.
Casey:
Ted Pine asks, you're forced to choose one line of Apple computers to kill.
Casey:
Which one is it?
Casey:
Definitely the Mac Pro, because I'm tired of hearing you two whine about it.
Casey:
I mean, no, all kidding aside, I would kill the MacBook Air.
Casey:
I think the MacBook is a great replacement.
Casey:
I don't really understand why the MacBook Air is there.
Casey:
Okay, I do.
Casey:
It's about price point.
Casey:
But really, kill the MacBook Air.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
Kill everything that is non-retina and has a spinning disk hard drive.
Marco:
And that would include the MacBook Air and the base models of the iMac.
John:
and the mac mini i think right you can't you can't just pick the base this is a line of computers you've got to say the whole imac so the macbook air is the answer like that that is a line of computers and it shouldn't exist and it should be removed and replaced by a better computer that hits that same price point tom wilkinson asks this one is mostly aimed at john if you could design your perfect gaming console what would it be
John:
It wouldn't be that different than the existing PlayStation 4.
John:
I'm mostly happy with everything they did there.
John:
I would change the controller a little bit.
John:
I would ditch the option.
John:
Yeah.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Marco, any thoughts on that by chance?
Casey:
Not at all.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Good talk.
Casey:
A friend of mine, Aaron Thacker asks, do you guys have any tech New Year's resolutions?
Casey:
Stop looking at my damn phone so often.
Casey:
That's about it.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco.
Marco:
I don't really do New Year's resolutions for all the Merlin reasons.
Marco:
They're not usually productive or effective.
Marco:
But one thing I'd like to do more of in the future as a general thing is less time wasted checking social media and more time making things.
Casey:
Yep, completely agree.
Casey:
John?
Casey:
I have none.
Casey:
I don't do New Year's resolutions.
Casey:
But if you did, what would you say?
Casey:
uh um i don't know i don't think i don't i don't think in those terms that i don't have anything all right fair enough ew paris asks in the past apple has made cheap or cheaper polycarbonate laptops and ipods both of which were bought by parents for kids and by college students these were the sort these were sort of apple's version of quote my first sony oh i miss those
Casey:
That started a lot of lifelong Apple users.
Casey:
Does it concern you guys that Apple's evolution to exclusively high-end hardware won't allow young users to buy into their ecosystem any longer?
Casey:
This is a great question.
Casey:
My first Mac was a polycarbonate MacBook, a polybook, as I love to call it, which drives Stephen Hackett bananas.
Casey:
I don't think it concerns me.
Casey:
No, but it's a great point and an interesting question.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
I think this is more about price than about materials.
Marco:
And so if they are satisfying lower price tiers, that's great.
Marco:
I mean, when we were coming up in this area, the cheapest Macs you could buy were like $2,000.
Marco:
And that was in like 1990s and 2000s dollars.
Marco:
So after inflation, we're doing pretty well.
Marco:
Even like the new MacBook Pros are pretty awesome compared to...
Marco:
you know how when we were when we were younger and getting into this i think as long as they serve lower price points somehow i think we're generally fine it it is a little bit unfortunate that the way they've chosen to serve lower price points is often things like non-retina screens and spinning hard drives which make the product overall suck that is unfortunate but as long as they hit those price points somehow i think they're okay on this particular front
John:
Yeah, I mostly agree that the materials changes as a red herring here.
John:
Like Apple is able to, has been able to, and currently is able to make good entry-level computers that are higher quality, that feel better because they are made of aluminum.
John:
And, you know, again, we have rose-tinted glasses for the price points of the old things.
John:
Apple is totally capable of making entry-level ones with the current aluminum glass thing, and they do, and some of them are actually pretty good.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Grant Avery asks, I'm curious to know what is your daily carry?
Casey:
On my person, in my left front pocket, I have keys.
Casey:
I have Listerine, what a breath mint sort of things.
Casey:
I forget what they're called.
Marco:
Those are all like strip things.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Casey:
Cool Mint is my flavor of choice.
Casey:
What else do I have in here?
Casey:
Oh, I have eyedrops, Sistine Ultra eyedrops, because I wear hard contacts for reasons that are not terribly interesting.
Casey:
And so my eyes get dry on a not terribly irregular basis.
Casey:
In my right front pocket, iPhone 7 in matte black.
Casey:
In the little change pocket, Burt's Bees lip balm.
Casey:
In the right back pocket, a very small wallet.
Casey:
I don't recall what the name is off the top of my head.
Casey:
In the left back pocket, a Field Notes.
Casey:
Oh, and also in right front pocket, a blue Pilot Precise V5 pen.
Casey:
And also in my left front pocket lately are my AirPods, which I freaking love.
Casey:
And that's it for my on-person everyday carry.
Casey:
Is that all?
Casey:
John.
Casey:
Yeah, that's it.
Casey:
John.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
John:
I don't carry anything in any of my pants pockets.
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, you carry the whole world with you, Casey.
John:
Although, to be fair, John puts all that in his wallet.
John:
It's so true.
John:
When I go to work, I have my wallet with me.
John:
But during the day, it is not in any of my pockets.
John:
Because it doesn't fit.
John:
No, it would fit fine in the front pocket.
John:
I do wear my badge at work, like to badge in and out of doors and stuff.
John:
And that's like clipped to my belt on a little stretchy thingamabobber to reach the door things.
John:
But that's the only thing that's on, you know, even when I go to meetings and stuff, I don't even take my phone with me.
Casey:
Wow, that's intense.
Casey:
I don't know how many pockets I went through, but I'm pretty sure I went through only four.
Casey:
I just went back and forth on a few, but the chat room is indicating to me I have about 87 pockets.
Casey:
So if that's the case, my bad.
Casey:
Grant Avery also asked, and secondarily, your personal bag setups, as in what do each of you use to carry your things for day-to-day use as well as travel?
Casey:
I am in love with Tom Bin bags.
Casey:
And in the show notes, I've already linked my review of the Tom Bin Cadet, which is my laptop bag.
Casey:
I also have a co-pilot, which is my kind of merce for when I'm traveling light.
Casey:
And in the review of the Tom Bin Cadet, I talk about the things that I carry in that bag.
Casey:
If you ever...
Casey:
Have a little bit of extra money to spend.
Casey:
I cannot recommend enough that Tom Bin is phenomenal.
Casey:
Marco, your laptop bag if you are, say, traveling to Dub Dub or something along those lines.
Marco:
I use a backpack from Waterfield Designs.
Marco:
whose name I completely forget, but they only make two backpacks, and it's the smaller of the two.
Marco:
So yeah, they're fantastic.
Marco:
That's sfbags.com.
Marco:
And whenever I do anything that involves carrying a laptop or iPad or anything else anywhere, I use a backpack.
Marco:
And I use that backpack, and it's amazing.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
It's full of dongles now.
Casey:
Of course it is.
Casey:
John...
John:
Um, I'm a backpack person.
John:
I always have been my current one, I think is an LL bean thing.
John:
I basically use the backpacks until they wear out.
John:
Um, and in my backpack is, you know, all my stuff.
John:
I've got my, my phone, my wallet, uh, you know, iOS charging cables and crap, thumb drives, all sorts of, it's not even that heavy cause you know, it's, there's mostly nothing in it and you know, I'll put hat and gloves in there, uh, in the colder weather and stuff like that.
John:
But yeah, basically that's it.
John:
It's, it's a backpack.
John:
If you've seen me at WWDC, you probably see me wearing a backpack and that's what I do.
Um,
Casey:
Martin Schleid asks, do you think pro hardware should be made to last and does that include upgradability in your opinion?
Casey:
Yes, it should be made to last.
Casey:
No, it does not by necessity mean upgradability.
Casey:
John.
Casey:
Same answer.
Casey:
Marco.
Marco:
Yeah, the same, really.
Marco:
Upgradability is nice when you can offer it, but the market tends to vote against it in a lot of things like laptops.
Marco:
It's more important in desktops where not only will they likely have a longer life due to less physical stress and everything, but also there's more room for it in desktops to have doors and ports and things with slots.
Marco:
Whereas in laptops, I think it's understandable that they're getting effectively unupgradable recently.
Marco:
It's unfortunate for a price perspective, but it's understandable in laptops.
Marco:
Desktops, it's less justified.
Casey:
He also asks, do you upgrade your hardware or do you generally buy an entire new package?
Casey:
Similar to what Marco was just saying, I do upgrade hardware when it's a desktop.
Casey:
We have talked on the show in the past about my woes with OWC RAM, which are now fixed.
Casey:
So I have 32 gigs of RAM in my iMac.
Casey:
But when it comes to laptops, I basically buy something as is since basically that's your only choice anyway.
Marco:
Marco?
Marco:
I don't upgrade much anymore because almost everything I buy from Apple now can't be upgraded.
Marco:
The iMac, I maxed out the RAM when I got it to avoid Casey's OWC issue.
Marco:
And that's the only thing I think I really even can upgrade about this iMac.
Marco:
So there you go.
Marco:
John?
John:
uh i upgrade when possible i mean this this mac pro has had like three graphics cards tons of different rams tons of hard drives in it um so yeah i think i am an upgrader but you know like marco said so few things can be upgraded anymore then i'm buying new stuff all the time brian haugen asks are you still playing desert golfing or altos of denture in what level on each uh i have never ever played desert golfing and i've played altos adventure like once so i have no answer for this marco
Marco:
I don't play much anymore with desert golfing.
Marco:
I also adventure.
Marco:
I played that kind of plane once and that was it.
Marco:
Desert golfing.
Marco:
I got somewhere in the thousands, like 3000 or something and got frustrated and started back at the beginning for peace reasons.
Marco:
And I'm currently up at 1500.
Marco:
But again, I don't, I don't play that much.
Marco:
So sorry.
Marco:
That was the count.
John:
648 is the whole number.
John:
Oh, I was going to say you lapped me.
John:
Desert golfing, I'm in the mid-1000s.
John:
I haven't played in ages, and I probably don't think I'd go back to it.
John:
Also, this adventure, I played until I unlocked everything.
John:
This was back when the game was new, before they started adding all these other things.
John:
So basically, I unlocked everything.
John:
And also, after the point where I realized the amount of time that I would need to invest to catch my friends who have high scores is more than I'm willing to put in.
John:
So I did clear it out, and I did get the good character, and I did spend some time doing some high score runs with that, but then bailed.
John:
And that was a long time ago.
John:
I still play it every once in a while, especially the Zen mode with no scoring, where you just hang out and do it.
John:
I do that occasionally.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Tohaha Saeed said, what technologies outside of the Apple-centric ones excite you these days?
Casey:
This could be different server-side language, some camera sensor technology, or a concept like functional languages.
Casey:
I just did a five-part series on RX Swift, which is reactive programming on my blog.
Casey:
It is really freaking cool, and I really like it.
Casey:
And it's sort of functional-ish, but it's both more and less than that, so that's my answer.
Casey:
John?
John:
I think probably I'm still looking at OLED TVs.
John:
I am excited about them, and I can't wait for them to mature and settle down.
John:
And so that's probably the tech that I'm mostly looking at these days outside of the Apple stuff.
Casey:
marco electric cars they're amazing and keep getting better fair enough uh let's see uh pretty much the entire internet asks what would it take for us to ditch the mac for something else to be better i don't mean that to be flippant i'm being serious uh nothing else is better if something else gets better then i'll switch marco
Marco:
Yeah, about the same.
Marco:
I mean, the Mac would have to get really unusable for the kinds of things I do, and something else would have to be good enough to get me to Switch.
Marco:
And honestly, even with Apple's current rate of neglect, I don't see that happening for a long time.
John:
John?
John:
It would take more than something being better, because it would have to be better by a lot, and I almost think, for me...
John:
it would require Apple to stop making Macs.
John:
Like, I mean, they would have to like push us out.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Just having something better wouldn't make me switch because my switching costs would be so huge, right?
John:
It would have to be phenomenally better.
John:
That could make me switch or basically Apple pushes us out.
John:
And then like whether there's something better or not, tough luck.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks a lot to our three sponsors this week, Coco Conf, Audible, and Casper.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Casey:
Because it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
Casey:
John didn't do any research.
Casey:
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.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Casey:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
now we can have the shortest after show ever all right yeah we should make it quick laser sailor asks as a bonus q a question uh in so many words does tina's new accord support car play i did not even think to ask you this i am so jealous of people who have car play does it support car play and if so have you tried it
John:
We talked about it in the after show of yesterday slash last week's episode.
John:
I didn't know yesterday and I still don't know today.
Casey:
You're the worst.
John:
That's true.
John:
We were in the car today and I changed a bunch of settings and everything to match my car.
John:
So it's a similar experience.
John:
By the way, the UI problem we currently have with the car is that...
John:
we're the same generation but like three two or three model years apart the keys the key fob things look and feel exactly identical so i need to get some kind of like textured rubbery stickery thing on one of them so i can feel in my pocket and figure out which the hell key fob i need to press the button on that is a big problem but anyway as far as i can tell her infotainment system actually is about the same as mine and that makes me think it doesn't support carplay but honestly i haven't looked it up yet so i don't know
Casey:
How do you not know this?
Casey:
Oh, my Lord.
Casey:
That's stunning.
Casey:
All right.
Marco:
So Tiff just got a new car delivered about a half hour before the show started tonight.
Marco:
And it does have, I think, I haven't confirmed yet because I literally only had time to like...
Marco:
reprogram the homely transmitter and bring it to the garage before the show uh but we ordered it with the new bmw implementation of wireless carplay i think they're the first manufacturer to get this apple has been weirdly quiet about its existence but it does have wireless carplay and that's probably going to be awesome and that is part of the reason why we got this car so
Marco:
it was a pretty big driver because i need carplay testing hardware that's a real car so i get some kind of feel for it sometimes and i think it's going to be a very long time before tesla ever adds it um if ever because their relationship with apple is not great and their their level of care about their media system is also not great uh so that's
Marco:
That's probably, I don't want to hold my breath on that one.
Marco:
But it's nice to have a car that has it.
Marco:
Oh, Tiff just confirmed via message that it does indeed have CarPlay.
Marco:
She used it on the way home from the dealer from picking it up.
Marco:
So that's cool.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So that's going to be cool.
Marco:
I'm looking forward to playing with that.
Marco:
And it'll be nice as a developer of a CarPlay app to finally not have to rely on everyone else to tell me all the bugs.
Casey:
What did she get?
Casey:
She got a 340 GT.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
That's right.
Marco:
Awesome.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Any other thoughts?
Marco:
Her review of it so far is it is faster and it has nicer stitching.
Marco:
Both of which are true.
Marco:
Steering?
Marco:
Steering any better?
Marco:
I don't know.
Casey:
Oh, good question.
Marco:
Hey, Tiff, is the steering any better?
Marco:
Are you listening?
Marco:
Yeah, because she noticed immediately when she got the other one that the steering was kind of numb and not great.
Marco:
So I'm curious about that as well.
Casey:
I will give her a chance to answer.
Casey:
I will say that if anyone on this earth would notice whether or not the stitching was better.
Marco:
She says it feels different.
Marco:
The steering feels different.
Casey:
That's probably good.
Casey:
If anyone would know whether or not the stitching was better, it would be Tiffany Arment.
Casey:
And so that is probably high praise if it's better.
Marco:
Never mind.
Marco:
She says the steering wheel feels different, like just the wheel itself, like the texture of the wheel, not the actual steering.
Marco:
Tiff, do you want to just come in here?
Marco:
Where are you?
Casey:
She's telling me all this by iMessage.
Casey:
She's probably in bed.
Casey:
God, don't make her come all the way downstairs.
Casey:
Here she is.
Marco:
Hey, come on over.
Marco:
You grab your headphones.
Casey:
Hey, dudes.
Casey:
Hey, lady.
Casey:
I have a question for you and Tina by Proxy.
Casey:
Can you please convince Erin that it's time for her to get a new car?
Casey:
Because she loves her car more than she loves me, and it's time to replace it.
Marco:
Erin, it's time to get a new car.
Marco:
You can love other cars.
Casey:
She doesn't listen to the show.
Casey:
Are you kidding me?
Casey:
So when we see each other, you need to work on her, please.
Casey:
I'll give you a whole American dollar.
Marco:
Why wouldn't you want a new car?
Casey:
That's all I got to say.
Casey:
She loves that car so much.
Casey:
So no, all kidding aside, how was your new car?
Casey:
How was the steering?
Casey:
How was the speed?
Casey:
How was the car play?
Casey:
Tell me everything.
Marco:
It's new and it's faster and the steering wheel feels smoother and thicker.
Marco:
The lights are a little bit brighter.
Marco:
So that's good.
Casey:
The headlights or the interior lights?
Casey:
I'm not trying to be funny.
Casey:
I'm genuinely asking.
Marco:
all of the lights but mostly the headlights because they're led now instead of the oh interesting okay yeah that's probably adjustable with some setting they actually are brighter and it has like a wider um spread i guess of the of the the headlights and um yeah other than that it's pretty much the same i can change the color of my interior mood lighting
Marco:
from either amber yeah it's either amber or it's or it's white it glows down from various areas of the car like an airplane and um let's see what else does it do oh when we did the car play thing when uh jared was hooking it up he's our car guy he uh
Marco:
aka a salesman at the car dealership that we dealt with a lot you know it has like the typical like messages and mail and you know all that kind of stuff and then you swipe over and there's overcast so that was pretty neat oh look at that hops is giving us the most et tu brute look possible he's stuck outside the office and now his whole family is in here except him and he's like just staring like pathetically oh he does look so sad i'm gonna go let him in hold on
Marco:
Everyone's coming in.
Marco:
Get him a little pair of headphones.
John:
Yeah, put hops in the podcast.
John:
He's got a lot to say.
John:
Sounds a lot like slurping, but you know.
John:
And do what you got to do.
Marco:
So my seats have like little white stitching on them.
Marco:
And from what I could tell, possibly the console would, whatever the heck it is, looks a little bit more knotty.
Marco:
than normal i don't know everything's in the dark i picked up a car at night in the winter and i couldn't see anything i couldn't even tell what color it was like they're like oh trust me it's blue it looks black but it's blue i'm like okay i guess i have to trust you because there's no more light there's no lights i had to go outside with a really bright led flashlight and shine it on the paint to confirm that it was the right color i don't even know if the interior is the right color i have no idea it's just been dark
Marco:
Yeah, normally we wouldn't do this, but like our hectic holiday scheduling has resulted in us having to pick up the car like today or tomorrow morning.
Marco:
And so we chose to do it tonight.
Marco:
But yeah, in retrospect, don't pick up a car in the dark.
Casey:
Now, are you traveling tomorrow?
Casey:
I don't recall.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
Are you taking the Tesla or are you taking the new car?
Marco:
Oh, we're not taking my car.
Marco:
The Tesla has more trunk space.
Marco:
It has double trunk.
Casey:
Ah, right.
Casey:
The frunk.
John:
The Tesla has more trunk space than your hunchback BMW.
John:
Yes.
John:
Because there's two trunks.
John:
Although, to be fair.
John:
It's like, well, why get the hunchback?
John:
Why are you doing this to her, Marco?
John:
Why?
Marco:
I want the hunchback.
John:
I try.
Marco:
I like it.
Marco:
You like the hunchback?
Marco:
Yeah, I like it a lot.
Marco:
It's in case I need to buy a chair at HomeGoods.
Marco:
I can get it home.
John:
All right.
John:
This is an antiquing conveyance vehicle.
Marco:
I've never... In the last three years, I haven't bought a chair at HomeGoods.
Marco:
But when I do, I'm ready for it.
John:
You'll be ready.
Marco:
Well, and also, I believe you also, Tiff, prefer a narrower car.
Marco:
Because my car is...
Marco:
A lot wider.
Marco:
It's like the next size up.
Marco:
It's like the 7 Series S Class equivalent size rather than hers is more like an extended 3 Series.
Marco:
Sure.
Marco:
Sounds good.
Marco:
No, I like the way the back opens up.
Marco:
I don't like a typical trunk anymore.
Marco:
I mean, I just don't.
Marco:
Which my car doesn't have.
Marco:
No, and your car doesn't have it.
Marco:
But it's bigger.
Marco:
Yeah, the main reason why you chose this, I believe, as we figured it out over the last few months was... I decided not to make a choice.
Marco:
That's why I chose it.
Marco:
Yeah, it was mostly inaction.
Marco:
The lease was ending.
Marco:
We had to get something.
Marco:
I'm like, let's just get the same thing because it's nice to have both kinds of cars sometimes.
Marco:
And you wanted CarPlay to test your app.
Marco:
That's what you said.
Marco:
We're like, you need to get this car so I can test my app.
Marco:
And I said, okay.
Marco:
That's basically it.
Yeah.
Marco:
So, yeah, I picked it up tonight.
Marco:
It was good.
Marco:
Oh, and the sound system is much better.
Casey:
Did you get the Harman Kardon?
Marco:
Yeah, I think I did.
John:
Nope.
Casey:
i don't think he was talking about something i got something go outside with a flashlight to see what you got i don't know he was saying that i got like the good sound system whatever it is sounds really good the harman kardon in my car anyway is phenomenal so if you got the harman kardon it would not surprise me if you were also impressed or i don't even know if it's harman kardon anymore but that's what it was when my car was new
Marco:
Yeah, well, like all the options were different this time.
Marco:
So it was kind of hard.
Marco:
Like the reason why the interior trim is different is because the entire option set changed between the first one that you ordered and this one.
Marco:
So everything is like very slightly different.
Marco:
As far as I can tell, it all feels pretty good because it was dark and I can't really see it yet.
Marco:
So I'll see it in the morning.
Casey:
You did not get an M Sport because you could not get the correct color.
Casey:
Is that correct?
Marco:
I think so.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yep.
Marco:
That's right.
Marco:
Because you want Tiff gets the dark blue and the M Sport is only available in the Casey blue.
Marco:
It's the same color that I always get my nails painted.
Marco:
So, you know.
Casey:
At least you match.
Marco:
You got to have your car matching your nails.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Duh.
Casey:
All of a sudden, in Go On in 60 Seconds, isn't that how they discovered the Honeycuda?
Marco:
Go On in 60 Seconds?
Casey:
Is that what I said?
Casey:
Anyway, in Go On in 60 Seconds with Mario...
Casey:
The Hemi Cuda, I believe, Angelina Jolie knew that it was a woman's car because she had lipstick.
Casey:
Maybe that's what it was that matched the color of the car that she found in the car.
Casey:
Good story.
Casey:
And then I found $5.
Casey:
It was amazing.
Casey:
Anyway, congrats on your new car.
Casey:
Thanks.
Casey:
And that's really exciting.
Marco:
Thank you very much.
Marco:
I'm very excited.
Marco:
It's a Christmas present.
Casey:
So are we going to see that car or another car when we all meet up?
Marco:
You'll probably see the Tesla.
John:
He has to come so his Tesla can dominate underscore Tesla.
John:
It's the same Tesla.
Marco:
The exact same model.
Marco:
Just mine's red and his is blue.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
Are you going to be able to plug in over there?
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, just, you know, not as quickly as here, but it's close enough.
Marco:
Yeah, anyway.
Marco:
Plus, like, their superchargers and stuff.
Marco:
Yeah, well, and, like, on a long trip like that, like, basically, if I'm going to be driving most of the time or all of the time, I want it to be in my car, you know?
Marco:
Like, I...
Marco:
For trips where that doesn't make sense, like the Long Island thing, we were going to have you leave at parts and I was worried about discharging.
Marco:
Like, fine, we'll take this car.
Marco:
But for the most part, if I'm driving a long trip, I want to be driving it in my car.
Marco:
And auto drive is pretty nice.
Marco:
But then you're not even driving.
Marco:
I think you guys would totally die if you knew how low my mileage was when I dropped it off.
Marco:
Let me just say that the dealership is pretty excited.
Casey:
So how many miles did you have in your car after three years?
Marco:
Under 10,000.
Casey:
Whoa.
Casey:
Are you freaking kidding me?
Marco:
Just.
Marco:
It was just.
Marco:
It's just under.
Casey:
Holy God.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I drive upstate sometimes.
Marco:
But mostly it's like around here.
Casey:
Are you sure?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Are you sure?
Marco:
But that's only like 400 miles a pop.
Marco:
So, I mean...
Marco:
i don't go that often twice a year you consider going out for chicken salad every day i know yeah i don't even i don't even go out for chicken salad although now i'm going i'm driving to the driving range so there's like two more miles a week big spender big spender i walk i'm good for the environment but and i'm also good for the bmw dealership i'm good for the environment i'm good for the environment says the owner of a
Marco:
That came over on a ship from a different country.
Casey:
That came over on a ship, exactly.
Marco:
Carbon neutral.
Marco:
No, I'm kidding.
Casey:
Fun fact, I actually did work with a company based out of Helsinki that would take hyper-accurate ocean current patterns.
Casey:
They would integrate that with navigation systems.
Casey:
So if you're a cargo ship going from, say, I don't know, Germany to the United States, and you would look at the ocean currents and you would say, oh, you know, this ocean current that's like 20, 30, 50, 100 miles north of where I really want to be, but it's a current that's running 10 knots east to west, which is the direction I'm traveling.
Casey:
I could save 11 deep billion gallons of fuel if I ride this current.
Casey:
And so that's what they would do.
Casey:
that's awesome yeah so it actually could be not terribly environmentally friendly but but not terribly environmentally hostile either going uh from germany to here on a ship you never know the internet says my uh wife's new car is carplay compatible and the internet would know right and everything on the internet is true john
Marco:
All right, now it is.
Marco:
It's officially Aaron's turn to get a new car.
Marco:
Oh, God, I wish.
Casey:
We actually saw an X5M when we were out doing our tacky light tour earlier, and I was kind of doing the, eh, eh, and she gave me the most serious and angry side eye I've ever seen in my life.
Marco:
Well, she wants a Mazda 6, like her current Mazda 6.
Marco:
Whatever Mazda's line is right now, an X5M is not that.
Marco:
That is a giant SUV that is also very expensive.
Marco:
I can't imagine Erin ever agreeing to replace her beloved Mazda 6 full-size sedan with a giant expensive BMW SUV.
Marco:
Why doesn't she have another Mazda?
Casey:
Well, I think that left to her own devices, I think she would either get another six, to your guys' point, or I think she would be okay with a Grand Cherokee.
Casey:
And I know that you guys are probably not fans of Grand Cherokees, but she has always liked them.
Casey:
Of course, I want her to get an SRT8.
Casey:
She has no interest in that.
Casey:
But if I were to wager a guess, I would say a new Grand Cherokee.
Casey:
That being said, she saw a Volvo, what is it, XC90, whatever.
Casey:
No, not the S. XC90, the SUV.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And she saw that outside of Costco and said that she thought that that was pretty good looking.
Casey:
So there's a prayer.
Marco:
Well, have you taken her car shopping yet?
Marco:
Have you been like, Aaron, we're going car shopping and you are going to go where you want to go.
Marco:
Not where I want to go.
Marco:
I've begged.
Marco:
I've begged.
Marco:
Make it even better.
Casey:
Aaron, I will watch the kid while you go car shopping.
Casey:
Oh, but she, I understand what you're driving at here, but she doesn't have any interest in replacing her Mazda.
Casey:
She'll replace the Mazda when it falls apart.
Casey:
i know i think you know what you have to do i have to sabotage your car saboteur god it's like star trek 6 am i right am i right john am i right i blocked that one out real time follow-up for my wife she says come on only the ex trim level has carplay so now the car is back to not having carplay oh see the internet was wrong this is the first time ever car we haven't looked into it yet we'll see tiff tiff did your car have a bow on it when you got delivery
Marco:
No, it should have, or maybe it did, and I just didn't see it because it was dark.
Casey:
It was too dark.
Casey:
That's disappointing.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
It's around Christmas and everything, too.
Marco:
They should have at least had a bow.
Marco:
Right?
Marco:
In exchange for your trade-in that had no miles on it, they could have at least given us a giant bow.
Marco:
I know, crying out loud.
Marco:
They just extended my other lease because we were lazy.
Marco:
Forgot to, like, re-up on our car.
Casey:
Aye, aye, aye.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I think we should all go to bed.
Casey:
Any other thoughts, Tiff, before you disappear?
Marco:
Vroom.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
That's all I got.
Marco:
Oh, my thought is when I started my car in the presence of Marco in the garage, because usually when I'm driving my car, when I was taking my old car out into the pasture where I was taking it, I realized how loud it was.
Marco:
I was very surprised.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Because he had the door open.
Marco:
And so normally I'm like just in the car starting at myself and backing out and like leaving.
Marco:
And yeah, it's pretty loud.
Casey:
I bet it sounds great, though.
Casey:
Seriously.
Marco:
It does, but it's loud.
Marco:
I think definitely my next car is going to be an electric car.
Marco:
I feel like this will be my last gas car.
Marco:
didn't we have a question for tiff about airpods maybe how they fit or something like that maybe this was last episode but i feel like we wanted to ask tiff something but marco you had said that she had just gotten her hands on the airpods yeah so what do you think um yeah i wore them last night while you guys were recording and um they're much more comfortable and i wanted to wear them mainly because i've been wearing my glasses for the last few days because i've had these
Marco:
drops that i can't wear my contacts so wearing like over the ear headphones is pretty oh it's horrible just moves them it gets oh it's just so uncomfortable so anyway so i went to the airpods and um they were pretty good after a while they did start to hurt a little bit
Marco:
But I think that that's with any in-ear earbud kind of thing does that.
Marco:
And it was really nice that I could just walk away from the... Because I had it paired to the Apple TV last night.
Marco:
So I was walking around the house.
Marco:
Oh, interesting.
Marco:
Doing laundry and getting stuff out of the car and going upstairs.
Marco:
And the range was really far.
Marco:
I mean, like, you know, our house and I made it pretty much to the other side of the house.
Marco:
And it only just started clipping.
Casey:
Well, to the laundry room is a hike.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
It only just started clipping like all the way over there or upstairs.
Marco:
So that was pretty impressive.
Marco:
And it was kind of nice being able to listen to the movie I was watching anywhere in the house and then come back and be like, oh, yeah, because they were just in my ear.
Marco:
I wasn't tethered to anything.
Marco:
But it was in my ear in a way that it was so discreet, kind of like a little Bluetooth set, you know.
Marco:
So that was nice.
Marco:
That's a very positive thing to say about them.
John:
Earpods don't have to hurt, by the way.
John:
They don't hurt my ears, no matter how long I wear them.
John:
So it just depends on what shape your ear is, I think.
Marco:
Oh, well then there you go.
Marco:
I have slightly hurty ears.
Marco:
They don't fall out, but they do hurt after a while.
Marco:
But I feel like anything in my ear hurts after a while.
Casey:
How many times did you watch Claymation Christmas back to back?
Casey:
My goodness.
Marco:
Ugh.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Tiff is not a fan.
Marco:
I mean, I have memories of it, but no.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
You're missing out.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
No.