MagSafe Cups of Water
Casey:
Top of the morning to ya.
Casey:
Oh yeah, I was not at all prepared for that.
Marco:
The best part about that is that that's the very first time you've ever greeted anybody on a Skype call.
Casey:
I think that's accurate.
Casey:
I really honestly... I'm not sure that was a greeting.
John:
I guess technically you're right, it is a greeting of a kind, but not meant that way.
John:
So is your beard gone or what?
John:
No.
Oh...
John:
This is my fear.
John:
I was like, he's going to get back and he's still going to have it.
John:
You just don't let it happen to you.
John:
Does Tiff like it?
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
Who's going to determine whether, oh no, this is a problem.
John:
It's a big problem.
Marco:
I have started this morning in Ireland, the conclusion of a wonderful trip to the Ool Conference.
Marco:
So I woke up this morning in Dublin.
Marco:
It is now in the time zone that I was supposed to be used to, 2 in the morning.
Marco:
And so we'll see how this goes.
Marco:
I never really shifted 100% to the new time zone before.
Marco:
So what has really happened is now just time has lost all meaning and I'm just always tired but yet can't sleep.
Marco:
So this should be interesting.
Casey:
Delightful.
Casey:
I am overjoyed that you are this tired with respect because this means I have a prayer of going to bed somewhere near my normal bedtime because I figured about an hour you're going to be like, I got to go.
Casey:
And then at this point, it'll be great.
John:
He's punched drunk now.
John:
He's going to be all loopy.
John:
He's going to want to talk even longer.
Casey:
Wait, we're having a holiday party?
Casey:
I got to go.
Casey:
I'll be right back.
John:
He's high on life.
John:
I'm going to go through the same thing that Marco's going through when I realize I'm not going to come back and do a podcast.
John:
I'm going to come back and go back to work.
Casey:
Yeah, that's not fun.
John:
I mean, technically, this is work for all of us, me included.
John:
Except some of us have other work.
Yeah.
John:
all right let's uh let's start the show as usual with some follow-up copyright 2011 john siracusa apfs ios app updates have hit the app store tell us about this john everyone's telling us about them they're saying uh hey guess what i downloaded the the updated version of my new of my favorite app and the top thing in the release notes was fixed apfs file name issues we have many many reports of many people
John:
sending us many applications that uh surprisingly feature uh apfs in their release notes so uh the update is happening even though the update was seamless for users for developers not exactly actually i i think i might have hit one of these problems so in in the recent version of overcast that's in the store as of like last week
Marco:
I had to remove support for M4A chapters.
Marco:
I forget whether I talked about it on this show or not.
Marco:
Did I talk about it here?
Marco:
No, you just tweeted about it.
Marco:
That's right.
Marco:
Anyway, so for AAC slash M4A slash MOV, John, chapters, I had to remove support for them temporarily at least until I can write my own parser because...
Marco:
the Apple parser kept crashing on a lot of the files that were doing that.
Marco:
And on iOS, there's no way, as far as I know, there's no way for me to parse metadata in a separate process or anything so that if it crashes, my whole app doesn't come down.
Marco:
And I think the crashes seem to start around the time the 10.3 beta started.
Marco:
So it would not surprise me if this was file system related.
Marco:
The reason I had to do all this, it was kind of a crazy hack I'll try to tell quickly,
Marco:
Basically, when Overcast downloads its files, it downloads them with no extension.
Marco:
It just saves it as a big ID number with no file extension, no .mp3 or anything.
Marco:
The metadata parser from Apple in the API can only operate on a file name or URL.
Marco:
It cannot operate just on a data blob.
Marco:
So it knows about the file name.
Marco:
And if that file name does not end in .aac or .m4a, it doesn't work right.
Marco:
But only for those files.
Marco:
And if it's an MP3, it needs to end in that to work right.
Marco:
And so the solution I came up with was when... Oh, and also I don't always have the whole file.
Marco:
Sometimes I'm streaming the file.
Marco:
And so I have to just write out the bit I have to a temp file and then read the metadata from it and then delete the temp file.
Marco:
And then to get around the extension issue, when I'm reading the metadata from an M4A file, I create a symlink to it with a .M4A extension, read the file name, read the data off of that, and then delete the symlink.
Marco:
And it was at those parts that I was getting a lot of crashes all of a sudden in 10.3.
Marco:
So something's up.
Marco:
with the way my app and or the metadata parsing library in iOS deals with me creating these symlinks or writing these little tiny temp files to disk that don't actually include the whole file.
Marco:
And it was causing the whole thing to crash sometimes.
Marco:
So I temporarily removed that support and left in only my own...
Marco:
ID3 MP3 parser, which supports MP3 chapters, which is what this show uses.
Marco:
Because that I can do all in memory with my own safe routines.
Marco:
But at some point, I have to figure out how to re-implement support for AAC chapters.
Marco:
And for the lack of them, I apologize to the entire nation of Germany.
Marco:
And I'm hoping to get that done quickly.
Marco:
But right now, there's a big problem with that.
Marco:
And I think it actually might be related to some bug somewhere...
Marco:
whether it's mine or Apple's, I'm not yet sure, regarding the file system because it did not happen before 10.3.
John:
Why don't you try switching from symlinks to hardlinks and see if that just magically fixes it?
Marco:
Well, I was thinking that that's... I'm not sure I want to even still be dealing with links.
Marco:
I think the better long-term... Well, the longest-term fix is to write my own parser, but the problem is, without getting too far into this again, the AAC chapters format is completely undocumented and proprietary to Apple.
Marco:
I've tried to figure it out on numerous occasions in the past, and I've gotten most of it
Marco:
but it's really really tricky and really undocumented and it like and the bits of data that you need are all over the file they aren't even all up front like they're interspersed throughout the entire file because they're it's it's structured in such a way that like as it's playing a track like if it's playing a stream of a track like if if say the chapter changes and the
Marco:
then the URL and image are spliced into the stream at that point in the audio data.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
This is why this format sucks.
Marco:
That same splicing format also applies to the titles of the chapters.
Marco:
You cannot build a table of contents reliably from an AAC chapter file unless you have the whole file because you have to skip through the whole thing to get all the titles out.
Casey:
That's bananas.
Marco:
Yes, I know!
Marco:
It's a huge pain.
Marco:
In the MP3 chapter format, it's based on ID3 tags, which are very, very crude, but very, very simple to deal with.
Marco:
And they have a lot of limitations.
Marco:
It's very similar to, like, RSS versus Atom feed formats, like, back in the day.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
rss is really simple hence the name um but you know it had it had some limitations and adam was designed to like be everything to everybody and as a result it's overly complicated and a huge pain in the butt um and that's that's kind of mp3 versus the mov format uh which is what aac and m4a that's that's all just rename and reading versions of the mob format uh basically asterisk but basically once again humans he's trying to say move he means a file that ends in dot mov just just so you're not listening to say what does he even
Marco:
insane because i know that's happening that's a color isn't it yeah mov has the most ram yeah wow um yeah so anyway that's uh that is my possible apfs bug in overcast and also why anybody listening why your chapters in mov format podcast might have stopped working in the recent update
John:
Yeah, that doesn't sound like an APFS thing, but who knows?
John:
It is a new file system.
John:
And if it is related to like, it's not it's not of the kind that people are talking about in the release notes because they're all talking about encoding, file name encoding issues.
John:
But I'm assuming when you make these temp files, you're making them with ASCII file name.
John:
So it's totally not an issue for you.
Marco:
Yeah, it's like like the file name is like is the ID number of the file dot M4A now.
Marco:
And so the other possible quick solution, if I want to do just a quick solution, just save all the files as dot M4A.
Marco:
even when they're not, and just have a migration that runs on the first launch of the new version that just renames them all and just doesn't do any kind of hard linking or sim linking, just permanently leaves them as those names.
Marco:
But then that will break the MP3 file decoder sometimes under certain conditions.
Marco:
So it's like... And the M4A slash AAC slash MOV slash MOV, those are all... Like, that format is...
Marco:
Last time I checked, it was like less than 5% of all items in the iTunes directory.
Marco:
So it's like... I think you mean the Apple Podcast directory.
Marco:
Oh, God, you're right.
Marco:
It's been like two hours.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So, yeah, in the Apple Podcast directory, the vast majority, well over 90%, the format is MP3.
Marco:
So to do a whole bunch of work to accommodate AAC files in a special way, especially chapterized ones, we're talking a very small number of podcasts.
Marco:
I'm guessing off the top of my head the total number of podcasts that are both chapterized and M4A format and that are listened to by anybody in Overcast is probably less than 100, maybe even less than 10.
Marco:
And so it's a question of whether I actually should do anything about this or not.
Marco:
But isn't it like 90% of the podcast in Germany?
Marco:
See, and the Germans do use chapters heavily, and a few of them do use AAC chapters, but a lot of them use MP3 chapters or other formats that I don't even support, like the Podlove Simple Chapters format, which is a wonderful idea, but I don't have a lot of market push to support it really yet.
Marco:
The idea behind that, by the way, Podlove Simple Chapters, which is the idea basically is to put the chapter information in the feed rather than in the individual files.
Marco:
And that's a great idea, but there's almost no support for it on either side, on the producer side, on the CMS side, or on the podcast app player side.
Marco:
So I don't know what I'm going to do about that, if anything, but...
Marco:
Chapters.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I waded into this chapter mess, and now I'm making a chapter tool, and now I have this chapter app, and now I'm stuck with parsing chapters forever.
Casey:
Chapters all the way down.
Marco:
It is.
Marco:
I do love the Germans, though.
Casey:
They are great.
Casey:
Bringing it back around, talking more directly about APFS.
Casey:
Kyle Seth Gray, otherwise known as Kyle's the Gray, had tweeted at us a very interesting pair of screenshots.
Casey:
So he writes, here's my iOS disks before and after upgrading to 10.3.
Casey:
So it shows in the before that he has a capacity or his disks are 86% full, 91% full and 20% full.
Casey:
after upgrade the same discs go from 86 to 40 percent from uh and then from 20 to 8 percent full which means somewhere out of nowhere he now has more free space thanks to apfs you're looking at the wrong column in these screenshots that's am i my bad yes it's a lot of numbers we'll put the link in the show it's a tweet and you can look at the screenshot so the percentages are different right but i mean this is a there's the output of like df or whatever um and
John:
The key thing to look at, like, so there are some partitions that are not interesting to us, like dev for the dev FS and the one at the bottom, which is like baseband data for wireless or whatever.
John:
But there are, you can see the, the OS and the user partitions and the key column is
John:
is size before ios 10 the size of the first one which is mounted at slash is 4.3 gigs and that's like the os partition i'm assuming and the size of like the big one where all your stuff is is 59 gigs so 59 plus 4.3 gigs is like this is a 64 gig phone right and then you know ancillary stuff left over for the other little partitions right
John:
After upgrade, the size of both the iOS and the your stuff partition, both of them say 64 gigs.
John:
So the OS partition, it's 64 gigs.
John:
And the user partition, it's 64 gigs.
John:
It's exactly what we were talking about.
John:
And this didn't occur to me before when I was talking about the sizing because I couldn't quite figure out how the numbers added up.
John:
But this makes perfect sense.
John:
If you have a 64 gig phone, it does what we were saying in the example last show with like if you had a one gig disc and you put two one gig partitions.
John:
They have a 64 gig disc essentially in this phone and they put two 64 gig partitions on it.
John:
One of them for the OS and one of them for all the rest of your stuff, which is a reasonable simplification because now they don't have to think about, oh, geez, how big should the OS partition be?
John:
How big is our OS?
John:
How much should we use?
John:
Because in the pre-iOS 10.3 state, the size of the OS partition was 4.3 gigs, but only 3.6 was used.
John:
So they give themselves a little wiggle room like if the next OS update is a little bigger or they could resize the partitions.
John:
But with APFS, they don't have to worry about exactly how to size partitions.
John:
Both of them are 64 gigs.
John:
Both of them have, quote unquote, the whole phone.
John:
And that messes up the capacity and how much is available.
John:
Measurements, depending on how you are going to are you going to report this information.
John:
So that could explain these discrepancies that we were seeing before.
John:
In particular, if you have 55 gigs used and you think the thing is 64 gigs, then you think you have more left than if it was a different size.
John:
Or it could just be DF totally confused by APFS.
John:
Either way, free space in APFS is weird.
John:
Indeed.
Casey:
Moving on, NVIDIA job postings suggest an NVIDIA chip return to Apple Macs.
Casey:
John, I presume this is most interesting to you.
Casey:
So tell us about this.
John:
We talked last show about Nvidia releasing the Mac drivers for their new card and for the whole line of top end cards, essentially, which is a weird thing to do because Apple doesn't even sell a computer that you can stick an Nvidia card in.
John:
Just older ones that people might still have hanging around.
John:
And I something was tickling my mind about this.
John:
And a lot of people sent in this link from September 2016 job posting.
John:
NVIDIA did a job post and they were looking for someone to be a software engineer at NVIDIA.
John:
And the role would require this is a quote from their job listing working in partnership with Apple.
John:
and writing code that will define and shape the future of graphics-related software on Macs.
John:
So they were looking for this in September, and now they've delivered a thing.
John:
So who knows when the Mac Pro decision was made?
John:
Who knows when this decision was made?
John:
But purely NVIDIA made a decision that previously we weren't doing much Mac stuff, but guess what?
John:
Now we're going to.
John:
And again, it seems really weird that NVIDIA would make that decision
John:
on its own because they have no market to sell into except for people with really old macs um so and especially saying working in partnership with apple certainly seems like apple was talking to nvidia sometime on or before september 23rd 2016 saying you know come back we we miss you
John:
let's let's let's kiss and make up whatever our problem was we want to get some of that uh sweet pascal hardware and max someday um and this could have been well before they even decided to keep making a mac pro so who knows maybe the iMac pro will have nvidia stuff in it i don't know i'm getting my hopes up a little bit but anyway um the mystery deepens uh but this wasn't an overnight thing and i think it's got to have it's got to have some form of apple's input because i don't just don't see any reason nvidia would do this on its own
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
A friend of the show, Kieran Healy, writes in regarding Marco at 43 minutes and 15 seconds of the last episode.
Casey:
We'll put an overcast link in the show notes.
Casey:
Quote, obviously, something has changed with Apple's thinking on release schedule since 2012.
Casey:
Around then, everything slowed down.
Casey:
This is paraphrased.
Casey:
Around then, everything slowed down, but now something has changed to make Apple flip around.
Casey:
So Kieran pontificates, I wonder if it was Project Titan, which is ostensibly the car project.
Casey:
Perhaps that swallowed up a lot of resources.
Casey:
Last I heard, maybe nine months ago, it sounded like that was getting at least substantially scaled back.
Casey:
It was surprising not to hear on the show, but also elsewhere in the news coverage I read, any discussion of the possibility that the Apple Car Project was the black hole that absorbed hardware design talent and effort for two to three years with no results as yet.
Casey:
And that had significant opportunity costs for every piece of hardware the company makes apart from the iPhone.
Casey:
Thoughts on that?
Marco:
Any kind of massive project like this, like Apple trying to make a car and then a self-driving car, that's going to draw talent from the rest of the company, no question.
Marco:
However, I think a large part of the talent that was or is working on that was probably from external sources.
Marco:
It's probably from external hires, from acquisitions, places like that.
Marco:
I don't think the team that was working on the Mac Pro or would have updated the Mac Mini otherwise or was trying to ship new laptops two years earlier, I don't think those people went to go work on the car project and that's why those things didn't happen.
Marco:
It's probably more complicated than that.
Marco:
Also, I bet Project Titan has not actually gone away or anything or necessarily been scaled back.
Marco:
I think it was just rethought based on what we've actually heard and what actually makes more sense.
Marco:
But anyway...
Marco:
I'm guessing that these are at least partially separate, that the product slowdown that we have seen was not probably a direct result of Project Titan sucking talent out of the company.
Marco:
I think it's way more likely that it was a combination of operational screw-ups somewhere along the way and also decisions up top that were basically along the lines of, we don't think these are worth doing.
John:
or project titan being scaled back like regardless of the current size of it uh because of the change in direction that was rumored i think a lot of people get laid off like we don't need people who know how to build a car if we're not building a car anymore but all of a sudden we do need people who know how to write software that other people in the audio industry are going to consume or whatever but yeah the main reason i put this in the show notes is to ask the question and you know it's people have this question a lot i think we've talked about a few times in the past but
John:
um you're always looking for something to blame for the the product that you want to be updated or worked on or become prominent not getting the attention it deserves and it's easy to blame it on the mysterious you know potentially very large uh secret operation going on to make a car and
John:
but i'm on the same page with marco i think um projects like this do take talent away um and they take attention away attention to the executives and the attention of the employees but in general if any project was going to be uh it was going to contain a large proportion of new employees who are new to apple or who would not be working on the mac at all it's a car project because yeah there's going to be smart people who you're like we want some of these people because they're just smart people and they're just good software people so we'll definitely take them right
John:
But it's not I think it's not the same thing as, for example, when iOS stole a lot of resources from the Mac because they're the same core OS under the covers.
John:
Right.
John:
And making a GUI operating system, even though one is touch and one is mouse, they're so closely related.
John:
They share code.
John:
They share concepts of it.
John:
The car is far enough away that I feel like the worst thing you can probably blame it for is distracting executives, perhaps.
John:
But I think it is a separate issue than why are Macs taking a long time to update all of a sudden?
John:
Or, you know, why are these other products being emphasized or de-emphasized?
John:
I mean, if you want to blame anything, you can blame, like, the watch or something.
John:
Like, another project that is closer to the Mac than the car is to say...
John:
You know, because there was, you know, the watch was behind schedule a little bit according to the rumors of when Apple wanted it to be released.
John:
And there's a little fire drill about software and all sorts of other stuff.
John:
So I don't blame the car or the whatever it is now at all.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
A friend of the show, Greg Pierce, had noticed something interesting about the Clips app, which I was able to talk about briefly last episode before we dove into three hours of Mac Pro Talk.
Casey:
He noted that Clips did not ask permission to use his camera or microphone, and he said bad form, Apple, which I agree with.
Casey:
Kay writes in reply to Greg, it's a deliberate choice made by Apple.
Casey:
They granted Clips special entitlements to access camera, mic, contacts, et cetera, without asking.
Casey:
And there's a screenshot of what I believe to be, oh, it's the entitlements of the Clips app.
Casey:
And it has a key com.apple.private.tcc.allow, which has entries such as KTCC service photos and camera and microphone, et cetera.
Casey:
which is an interesting special case that we aren't allowed to do that blesses clips and gives clips access to your mic and camera and contacts and whatnot without the user actively having done so.
Casey:
Which, I mean, obviously it's Apple's right to do that, but I don't know.
Casey:
I kind of wish that they would just play by the same rules as everyone else.
John:
So this is not a new thing with clips.
John:
Tons of Apple apps do this, but it's just it's worth highlighting.
John:
Again, in case people didn't know, you know, obviously Apple runs the platform.
John:
They can do whatever the hell they want.
John:
Right.
John:
And they do like, I mean, they put Xcode on the Mac app store for crying out loud.
John:
Like Xcode is in slight violation of a couple of Mac app store rules that apply to other applications.
John:
But for this specific case and for iOS apps like this in particular, I think it's an interesting object lesson for the policies they have in that clearly someone at Apple who is making clips thought that not having to ask for permission to access the camera and the microphone and your contacts and your photos and stuff like that
John:
is a better user experience for the app like forget about whether they have the ability to get rid of to put these secret entitlements in or not like it's a design question is this app better when it asks for permission or is this better when it doesn't ask permission and it seems like this is an interface decision this is a nicer experience for users if we don't ask for permission right um but because only apple gets to make that it's kind of like they're saying
John:
Not only do we, Apple, get to do secret things you don't get to do, but because we get to do those secret things, our applications have a nicer user experience than yours can ever have.
John:
Because the first thing you have to do on first launch is throw a bunch of dialogues in someone's face and say, can I do this?
John:
Can I do this?
John:
Can I do this?
John:
And users don't like that.
John:
And we get to bypass that.
John:
But you, because you are untrustworthy, must have a worse user experience.
John:
And needless to say, the vast majority of applications downloaded from the App Store are not made by Apple.
John:
And so it's like...
John:
every application except for apples has to have a worse user experience and i don't know what the the solution is because you do want applications asking for permission you don't want applications to be able to secretly use your camera and get your photos right um but it's an interesting dilemma because it's like apple apple is choosing not to eat its own dog food and follow its own rules not because they're flouting their power because because i think they really believe this makes a better application and so
John:
Yeah, I think this is evidence of perhaps a rethinking, even if it's just a very minor rethinking of how permission is asked for and granted, because perhaps the most obtrusive way to do anything on iOS is to throw a modal dialog on top of everything.
John:
And I'm not sure what the answer is.
John:
Would it be better if it slid down or had a different appearance?
John:
Would it be better if there were some other way that these permissions manifested?
John:
Maybe when you download the app, you could...
Casey:
give it something or users could i don't even know i don't know what the solution is i just thought it was uh it highlighted this this uh user interface issue more so than the technical thing because again tons of apple apps do this finally a t-shirt update so if you are listening to this episode either live or recorded it doesn't matter you are probably listening to it sometime before april 26th if you are listening to this episode right now
Casey:
And you want a t-shirt and you have not ordered it, please order it now.
Casey:
I cannot tell you the amount of times we've heard people say either, oh, I had no idea the t-shirts were for sale, or, oh, I meant to get one, but then I just plum forgot.
Casey:
Don't be that person.
Casey:
Order a T-shirt.
Casey:
Yes, this is incredibly self-serving.
Casey:
Yes, I acknowledge that.
Casey:
But I am so sick of people saying, oh, I didn't have any idea.
Casey:
Or, oh, I forgot.
Casey:
Don't forget.
Casey:
Please, if it's April 26th of 2017, before April 26th of 2017, you're listening to this show, please, if you are interested, buy a T-shirt.
Casey:
Now, John, can you give us a little bit of details on what's going on with those?
Casey:
Because there's been a couple of changes since we last spoke.
John:
Yeah, but first I have to remind myself to listen to your advice because for the past week I've been like, you know what?
John:
I need to order shirts too.
Casey:
Same here actually.
John:
I too have not ordered my shirts.
Casey:
Don't be like us.
Casey:
Don't be like us.
John:
When we stop selling these shirts, even we can't order them again.
Casey:
Yeah, that's really true.
John:
We will be out of luck.
John:
um so here's what happened since last show i talked about how we might be changing things to instead of taking all of your orders for 20 something days and then you know after the sale ends sending this huge giant ship in the shirts out to everybody instead we might switch to sort of a continuous fulfillment type of thing and that is what we've done uh it's like an every three days type of thing and that manifests on the teespring site uh uh saying
John:
this sale ends in two days this sale ends in one days and many people keep sending us tweets panicked oh no it says it ends in one day or in two days but you said it was going to end on the 26th um very often these people have already ordered their shirt they're just trying to look out for other people to say like or look out for us and say you might not know it but you have your stuff misconfigured well what happens is when it ends it just immediately relaunches for another three-day window and this is going to repeat until the 26th ish
John:
So don't fret if it says you have two days remaining or one day remaining.
John:
Look at the calendar.
John:
If it is the 26th or before, you can still order.
John:
If it's after the 26th, take seriously any things you see on the site.
John:
This is just the way it works on the site.
John:
I wish we could have said continuous fulfillment, but with a definitive end date.
John:
But we can't because this is not how the site works.
John:
So never fear.
John:
It's a rolling cycle that repeats every three days-ish.
John:
And the other thing I wanted to mention...
John:
because teespring itself mentioned it to us one of the shirts that we sell in our bazillion different color varieties here which by the way we didn't point this out but uh and we sort of did this accidentally which is appropriate um usually we have some kind of silly in joke apple related in joke for our shirts for the past couple of years this year the silly unintentional in joke was that
John:
our shirt names and the million varieties are like the million different varieties of apple product names it's like macbook two usb ports 2013 you know late 2013 or whatever so that's what our shirts are like and we have a million different varieties anyway one of them is we call the jet black shirt which is you know obviously an allusion to the new phone color for the iphone 7
John:
And the jet black shirt is a black t-shirt and the printing on it is also in black.
John:
And that's the joke.
John:
It's completely black.
John:
If this is not clear to you that it is black printing on a black t-shirt, it will be basically invisible.
John:
Like if you're buying the shirt and you get it and you're like...
John:
hey i can't see anything on this shirt because it's black ink printed on black that's the joke it's a jet black it's you know how much more black could the shirt be and the answer is none none more black which is a different joke um or reference if not joke anyway um so teespring was encouraging us very strongly to not sell a shirt
John:
with black printing on black because customers get it and they're angry because they can't see anything on it and i had faith in our customers and say i hope they get the joke that it's a jet black shirt and it does have black printing and you can see it in the picture like it's not a secret that it's black printing on black but needless to say if you see that shirt and you're wondering is this black printing on a black shirt and will this be hard to see yes it's black printing on a black shirt and it will be super duper hard to see and that's the
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So yes.
Casey:
So if you're listening to this, do not be like Casey, John, and Marco.
Casey:
Don't be us.
Casey:
Be better than us, which is not a very hard thing to do.
Casey:
Go to atp.fm slash shirt and buy you a shirt if you are so inclined.
Casey:
That definitely helps us on the show.
Casey:
And we thank you to anyone who has even considered doing so.
Casey:
But please blame only the mirror if you miss the window because this one's on you.
John:
Although you should be like us in that when you actually do order shirts, you should order like five of them like all of us are going to do.
John:
That's true.
John:
I think I'm getting ones for my kids for the first year.
John:
My daughter said she might want one.
John:
She likes the rainbow one like everybody else.
Marco:
John, didn't you not even buy yourself the edition shirt two years ago?
Marco:
No, that was me.
John:
No, I totally did.
John:
I've got an edition.
John:
I'm part of the elite.
Casey:
Are you kidding?
Casey:
I was way too cheap to buy an edition shirt.
John:
Casey didn't buy an edition.
John:
Let's think about who's actually cheap here.
John:
I did buy an edition.
Casey:
Yeah, just don't be like us kids.
Marco:
They just go into the t-shirt museum, though.
Marco:
I haven't actually worn it, you know.
Marco:
I think I've worn mine, like, twice.
Marco:
Like, I'm afraid to wear it too much.
Marco:
I don't want to wear it out because it's gold.
Marco:
It's a valuable t-shirt.
John:
Almost as valuable as a Cottonboro T-shirt shipped to Europe, right?
John:
Sick burn.
John:
Sick burn.
John:
The real valuable t-shirt for people who haven't been keeping up with the t-shirts is the very first t-shirt we ever printed where there was a printing error on it.
John:
And so everybody who got that t-shirt got like the equivalent of the upside down airplane on the stamp thing, right?
John:
Where it's a misprinted, incorrectly made shirt.
John:
And then all those same people got a second shirt correctly printed for free.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So those people got two shirts for the price of one.
John:
And they also got a special collector's item never to be reproduced printing error shirt.
John:
So kudos to those people.
John:
Put those into the shirt museum.
Marco:
oh goodness all right any other follow-up john the keeper of the follow-up anything else you'd like to add no we're at the end you see it you can see it you know john isn't only the keeper of the follow-up i'm heavily credited
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Apple has apparently patented a USB-C MagSafe-style adapter, which is super-duper exciting for those of us like myself who, even though I don't have a USB-C laptop, I can tell you I will miss having MagSafe because it saved my bacon a bunch of times.
Casey:
So do we have any thoughts on this?
John:
Why are you excited by it?
John:
That's the first question.
Casey:
Because I feel like I have had my laptop saved and or legs saved many, many, many times by the MagSafe adapter that's been on my laptop or been on my laptops.
Casey:
So this looks like it would bring it back, which would be great.
John:
You need a MagSafe for cups of water, but they don't have that yet.
Casey:
That is true.
John:
um so the reason i think you should not be excited about it is because as we've said many times apple patents everything patents have no real bearing on anything that apple will produce especially if you see the patent before the product it's a good chance that there's not a product related to that but the reason i put it in here um is not because i think apple will make such a thing although belkin and a few other companies i think actually do make this exact thing that you're seeing here which is like a little thing that plugs into usbc and has a little mag safey kind of magnet snap offy thing on the end yeah griffin is the one you're thinking of and it's
John:
it's unfortunately it's not very well regarded yeah but i mean it's the same idea though it's just the implementation may not be good because it is actually tricky to get this stuff right um the reason i think it's interesting is because back when we knew they were dropping magsafe but none of us had actually seen the products yet and we hadn't really used the usbc we're like well
John:
you know magsafe is great and everybody loves it but it is bigger and maybe maybe usbc will the connectors will just yank out just as easily as magsafe does because it's a whole new connector it's not like a big usba connector you know who sees who knows what it'll be like but now that we all have experience with usbc i think it's pretty safe to say
John:
it does not come out as easily as MagSafe in any way, shape, or form.
John:
And that the hazard of tripping over your cord that's connected through USB-C to your laptop is back.
John:
It used to be mostly gone with MagSafe, depending on the angle that you trip over it on.
John:
But now the danger is back.
John:
And I think USB-C, kind of like AirPods, is one of those...
John:
little things it seems like oh whatever you know wireless earphones or you know oh magnet instead of plugging it in that seems nice but i think magsafe is was mostly universally beloved the only complaints i ever heard about magsafe were from uh couch chargers people who use their you know thing connected on the couch or like with a big comforter or blanket and they would say it was a little bit too loose and that like it would knock it out unintentionally
John:
But that's the only bad thing I've ever heard about MagSafe.
John:
And for a connector and a technology that looks, if you just, you know, look at it, it looks like weird and delicate in the same way that lightning does.
John:
And that like you look in it, it's like, so it's a magnet and these, you know, this little tiny set of contacts inside there.
John:
And all the power to this laptop is going through these tiny little pinprick point things.
John:
They just seem so much less robust and what if stuff gets in there and so on and so forth.
John:
But I've had MagSafe on many, many devices and still have it on many of them.
John:
And I still think it's a great idea, well executed.
John:
Again, you know, Modulo, the looseness of like MagSafe 2 and other issues like that.
John:
And I think it's pretty beloved.
John:
I think people like Apple products because they have MagSafe.
John:
It was another one of those Apple things that makes it better than just a regular laptop.
John:
And when it went away and when we discovered that there is no real replacement for it, it's just like, well, that advantage is now gone.
John:
It kind of made their laptops worse in a way.
John:
In some tiny way, it made their laptops worse.
John:
And Apple having a patent like this makes me think that
John:
At the very least, somewhere inside the company, they said, can we go all USB-C, but also retain the advantages of MagSafe somehow by the answer to everything that is the answer in the world of USB-C, which is let's make an adapter.
John:
And so they did.
John:
and patented it but you know decided not to ship it for whatever reason because maybe it's still kind of clunky or whatever anyway all this is to say that i wish instead of doing this adapter and going usbc everywhere and they're not shipping this adapter and leaving the third parties i wish they had come up with magsafe 3 if magsafe is too big and clunky
John:
And your devices are getting thinner and thinner.
John:
Can you come up with some other solution that also uses magnets that has all the same advantages in it?
John:
We haven't seen a patent for that, but clearly nothing they've shipped reflects that.
John:
Anyway, all I'm saying is I miss MagSafe and I wish it would come back.
John:
And it seems like at least some contingent inside Apple also misses MagSafe because they tried to do something to bring it back.
Marco:
If you're going to do MagSafe on USB-C, the solution is not to have this weird little stick-out half-inch-long adapter that you need to also have with you or stick on your cables and have that break away.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Anything that involves a rigid adapter against a USB port...
Marco:
I think is not a good idea long-term because it so easily just breaks off in the port or something else.
Marco:
All those USB hubs that were designed first for the MacBook One that literally just attach right next to it, flush against the case and have this big long hub down the side, that's just asking for it to have your knee push against that or something and have the...
Marco:
end of the cable snap off into the into the socket like anything like that i think is a bad idea and i think the the relatively mediocre reception of the griffin thing that looks just like this uh is i think reinforcing of that to me if you're going to have this problem you have now which is you're not going to have a dedicated magnetic charging uh port anymore you're just going to charge through any usbc port then you can't make them all magnetic because you know that's not how usbc works and
Marco:
But you can do an innovation that Microsoft figured out in 2001, I think, which is whenever the Xbox One came out.
Marco:
And I don't mean the Xbox One.
Marco:
I mean the Xbox number one, the first Xbox.
Marco:
And that was you put the magnetic splitter thing a few inches away from the console in the cable.
Marco:
In a similar location that many cables would have one of those drum-shaped magnetic interference reducer things, a few inches from the connector head, you have a little breakaway thing that if you pull it the wrong way, it opens up.
Marco:
It's like MagSafe six inches into a cable, basically.
Marco:
That worked great on the Xbox, and I'm sure it wouldn't be the most visually pristine thing, but neither is this world full of crazy adapters we have now.
Marco:
The adapters are all ugly and stupid and clunky, right?
Marco:
So if you move it away from the port by a few inches onto the cable, you have all the same safeties of MagSafe.
Marco:
But you get it away from the laptop body, it then works fine on any USB-C port, and it doesn't require the use of these little fragile adapters.
John:
Back when we talked about this originally, this actually wasn't the most popular one, although you did bring it up back then, too, because you have this absurd love for that huge console.
John:
it was a great console uh-huh uh-huh the most common the most common thing that people brought up was um the opposite of having having the magnetic thing at the other end like at the other far end rather than in the middle somewhere like it basically at the part where it plugs into the you know the the white brick thingy you know um but i think both middle and the other end are worse solutions than just magsafe 3 on the on the laptop because
John:
middle and the other end are both much more likely to be in inaccessible places you know the end that's where the laptop is accessible because you can get at the laptop right you put a laptop on the desk you have to be able to reach the laptop to type on it and use the trackpad that means you can also reach the part where you plug and unplug uh you know the the little plug thing and if it becomes undone because something you know because you yank it or something knocks or whatever you just plug it right back in like and i think part of the experience with mag safe that makes good is not just the breakaway ability
John:
but that it is a pleasing way to connect and disconnect with a little magnet which is a frequent operations infrequently someone will trip over it very frequently you will plug and unplug it and i think it's more pleasant to plug even just being able to yank it out to unplug it and not having to be careful or slide straight out or worry about bending or whatever so that's part of what i love about magsave and it's part of the reason why i don't like middle because who can get at the middle uh when someone does trip over it and like some end of it is going to tuck behind something it's going to be a pain in the butt to try to find it again
John:
I don't like the other end because the other end is probably in a power brick that's either in a wall socket or at least close to it.
John:
Also harder to get to.
John:
And middle is ugly because, you know, it's just Johnny Abbott would never like it.
John:
It's not the big bulge in the middle of things.
John:
So I still come down strongly in favor of MagSafe 3 as in have an actual MagSafe port on the laptops and have a MagSafe thing that plugs into it.
John:
Just make it a new size.
John:
that fits in i mean if you make it the size of usbc then you're like well this will last as long as usbc does because as soon as we're too thin for usbc we would have been in the same situation anyway um but instead apple has done nothing including not shipping this adapter and as marco said the one that is out there does not get good reviews it doesn't mean that it's impossible to make a good adapter just means that one is not as good as real magsafe was
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thanks a lot to Jamf for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So there was an interesting development today as we record this, if I'm not mistaken, which as you're listening to this might be like a week ago.
Casey:
But today it was announced that it's official iTunes Podcasts is now Apple Podcasts.
Casey:
And there's new badges that you can use and so on and so forth.
Casey:
Jason Snell has started to wonder, is this the beginning of the end for iTunes?
Casey:
And what does that really mean?
Casey:
So I don't I don't I certainly don't know.
Casey:
I can't say I would be bitter if iTunes either went away or more accurately, the app just got split up several ways.
Casey:
But I mean, this is some pretty heavy reading of the tea leaves.
Casey:
What do you think, Marco?
Marco:
I mean, this all might be leading to something big.
Marco:
Or it might just be like iTunes is not as strong of a brand as it used to be anymore.
Marco:
When they launched the new streaming music service, they didn't call it New iTunes Music.
Marco:
They called it Apple Music.
John:
Let's call it iTunes Music 2013 or whatever year it was.
John:
And then the next year it would just be called New iTunes Music.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
It could be part of a big, grand iTunes deprecation plan where everything branded as iTunes is being replaced by separate things.
Marco:
And that would be cool.
Marco:
But I don't think this is evidence of that.
Marco:
It might be.
Marco:
I think we will be able to look back at this in retrospect if that comes to pass and say, oh, that was the beginning of it.
Marco:
But yeah, right now, I don't think we can really say anything except that we've been hearing rumblings for a while.
Marco:
Apple is working on some kind of updates to their podcasting division or whatever.
Marco:
And some of those are going to be enhancements for publishers, most of which have been totally unspecified so far.
Marco:
But we know that they're working on something for podcasts.
Marco:
So this is just one step of that in all likelihood.
Marco:
Just the very first step of now it's Apple Podcasts to go along with Apple Music.
Marco:
I don't think this really means anything yet.
John:
So I think this is kind of actually like a lagging... That's the wrong phrase, not a lagging indicator.
John:
But this change in branding from iTunes Podcasts to Apple Podcasts is actually something that's overdue.
John:
It is catching up to the reality.
John:
And the reality is that...
John:
On all these podcast sites where you see the subscribe in Overcast and subscribe in iTunes, like that's the other little badge button that you would hit, like the iTunes brand being associated with podcasts is past the point of being mostly nonsensical because iTunes...
John:
Like, we just know it because historically speaking, the iTunes podcast director was important for podcasting, and it's also a very important, popular, authoritative index of podcasts these days.
John:
And it happened to appear first in an application that we know as iTunes, but that no longer has any relevance, if it ever did, to podcasts.
John:
it barely has any relevance to music anymore, which is why Apple Music is called Apple Music, right?
John:
That the iTunes brand in all its forms, both in association with music in an application or association with a podcast or any other things that it has done, doesn't make sense in the current Apple ecosystem.
John:
And so to continue to have branding and promotional materials and website buttons and marketing communications and everything...
John:
with the itunes name in it is you know is not a good idea and they should have stopped doing it a long time ago and so now i think their branding is catching up with that i think their product should also eventually catch up with it as well like it has it has a lot on the on the phone there's still icons on the phone that say itunes but the fact that they broke out the tv app and that apple tv is called you know apple tv instead of itv and that they have podcasts broken out and you know like
John:
i'm gonna say that the rats are fleeing the sinking ship of itunes but they've been they've been leaving for a long long long time and eventually all that will be left is this weird bloated mac application like it might even leave you know ios home screens and the only thing left will be the mac application and that probably has the least resources to ever refactor it but um
John:
I'm all for them both rebranding and restructuring this.
John:
But even if they don't do that, and even if it's just a simple rebranding exercise, good, because it's time to rebrand these things and to divorce them from iTunes.
John:
It's a name that doesn't have it.
John:
The only connotations the name has for anybody who remembers it are like dated connotations.
John:
Like, oh, yeah, I remember buying my first things on iTunes.
John:
Anyway, now I subscribe to Spotify.
John:
And when I see iTunes podcasts, it's like...
John:
podcasts kind of like that old thing i used to do with music doesn't make any sense so itunes has served apple well um but you know once apple itself uh has switched its preeminent music service away from the itunes brand that's the day the itunes brand died and now all we're doing now is just you know
Marco:
letting the rest of the product catch up with it.
Marco:
I would say it was even earlier than that.
Marco:
I would say it did make sense to say for a podcast, subscribe in iTunes in the early days of podcasting before there was all this mobile listening when you were mostly listening by literally subscribing in the iTunes app on a Mac or Windows and syncing them to your iPod to listen to.
Marco:
So that made sense then.
John:
but it was so painful then though it was that was really that was a bad time and i mean it was great for the time you know in the sense like dos was great for its time uh anyway so i don't know if it was great for the times i i i can't think of it a single time here we go there's always like so here's the thing singing songs to my ipod back in the days like oh you've got your your ipod with a monochrome lcd screen and a click wheel or you know it
John:
a mechanical spinning wheel like first gen ipod putting songs on that by connecting it with a firewire cable to your mac and itunes would see it and syncing things to it i mean it's clunky but that was like that was the tech the problem with podcasts is there are they are a regularly published thing like they're a feed it's not like you put your songs on your ipod you put your podcast in your ipod and you have them there's never any putting your podcast in your ipod there's always more podcasts like every day of the week if you're subscribed to a lot of them
John:
Whereas new songs aren't arriving in your iTunes collection every day of the week unless you spend a lot of your time buying music.
John:
So it was so painful to have to constantly have this mental... Keep in your head the state of whatever is on your iPod.
John:
Oh, when's the last time I synced?
John:
Is the new episode of Show X on there?
John:
Do I have to sync again?
John:
Did I remember to sync before I left the house?
John:
It was a terrible fit.
John:
And so I never remember liking it, whereas I remember definitely liking syncing music onto it, maybe because my music collection, again, doesn't change that frequently.
John:
But I never liked it with podcasts.
John:
And all I can remember is all the times that I was disappointed that I didn't have the most recent episode of the show I wanted to listen to.
John:
on my ipod at the time or you were like you were like about to run out the door you're like you're about to be late for work you can't stand a 20 minute itunes sync yeah like imagine how many people in the world were collectively five minutes late to work during that time because they were waiting for their ipod to finish syncing the new podcast episodes and you couldn't tell just just put that one episode on it'd be like nope gotta gotta do syncing it's gonna be a while step five of seven stop
Marco:
Anyway, it did make sense to say subscribe to iTunes for a podcast back then.
Marco:
But because the iTunes brand was never really used on iOS.
Marco:
There is the iTunes app, but that's basically like the video and movie store, right?
Marco:
It's like how you can buy music, videos, and movies on the phone.
Marco:
That's the only place that the iTunes name was ever used on iOS.
Marco:
So to say subscribe in iTunes for a podcast now makes very little sense because what does that mean to anybody using a phone?
Marco:
Almost all podcast listening is happening on mobile these days.
Marco:
Mobile has destroyed desktop and other listening.
Marco:
Almost everything happens on mobile.
Marco:
So if you tell a podcast listener to subscribe in iTunes, there's a very good chance they don't know what you're talking about.
Marco:
So I think this makes a lot of sense just as a thing that they probably should do for podcasts.
Marco:
And again, I wouldn't read anything more into it than that because there might be something more to it, but there's also a very good reason for them to have done it on their own.
Marco:
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Casey:
Peter Beardsley wrote in probably 18 years ago, and he said, a few years back when the Wii U sales were slumping, we were all doubting the future of Nintendo.
Casey:
John said something along the lines of, quote, as long as there is still a viable market for dedicated game consoles, Nintendo can survive.
Casey:
These days, they seem to be doing more than just surviving.
Casey:
Breath of the Wild... Oh, this must not have been that long ago then.
Casey:
Breath of the Wild is a fantastic game that turned me back into a believer.
Casey:
Taking into account Super Mario Run, the Switch, and Breath of the Wild, what grade would John assign the company?
Casey:
Is he bullish about Nintendo's future?
Casey:
That means you're happy about it, right?
Casey:
I always get bearish and bullish backwards.
Casey:
Anyway, how does he feel about their upcoming paid online service, which I didn't even know about?
Casey:
Well, as the email finishes, the people want to know, and now I am one of the people.
Casey:
So, John...
Casey:
How do you feel about Nintendo?
John:
I had to give them a grade.
John:
I would still give them like a B minus or so.
John:
And here's why.
John:
First of all, the Switch is still... I mean, it's doing well by all accounts, but it's still too early to call because they're still in the afterglow of their launch, which launched with one of the best games that Nintendo has ever made.
John:
Everyone loves Breath of the Wild.
John:
Universally good reviews.
John:
I love it.
John:
It's great.
John:
But...
John:
does it have legs how's how's it gonna what's the switch going to be selling like three or four years from now is it going to have the longevity that you would expect of a console in the past let alone the longevity of today's consoles which seem to have second lives when you get like the ps4 pro and scorpio and all that stuff where it's technically the same console but it's a bumped up version like it's extending the life like give these consoles more time whereas the wii u did not have a long life it was not very successful the thing about the switch and breath of the wild uh that that
John:
makes me downgrade their grade perhaps by a lot in terms of uh you know making dedicated game consoles is breath of the wild was the game that was originally announced for the wii u and it was developed with wii u specific features so like there would be stuff on the game pad and also stuff on the tv screen and motion control for the aiming and also stuff like that
John:
and because of the short life of the wii u and because of the rapid rapid necessary development of its replacement the switch nintendo had to change things around and take out the wii u they didn't have to do this but this is what they did take out the wii u specific features for the wii u version because they don't want the wii u version to seem like it's the better version they want you know you want the switch version to be the better version and the switch doesn't have a separate gamepad and tv although
John:
if they had designed it differently it could have because you've got all the hardware there but but it doesn't it's got if you put it in its little cradle you can see on the tv and if you hold it on your hand that's where it is you don't have a two-screen experience with switch for this game um and so breath of the wild as fantastic as it is could have been a ps4 game
John:
And the exact same game, it would have better graphics and a better frame rate.
John:
It could have been a PS4 game.
John:
And that has not been true for the most part of Nintendo's breakout hits in the modern era.
John:
The Nintendo 64...
John:
and mario 64 and the analog stick like that is all of a piece you cannot put out mario 64 on the snes or sega genesis or you know anything like that because the whole game is designed around not just 3d hardware but also the controllers and other like the hardware and the software went together to provide the innovative experience we is an obvious much more modern example the we doesn't exist without the hardware it's hardware and software together
John:
the game cube i would say is apple's most technologically successful traditional console and that it was just plain a good competitive powerful console with the with a good controller at a good price well designed for profitability um just you know straight down the middle like basically what microsoft has always done with its consoles right in recent years starting with the wii though nintendo has been
John:
making less powerful consoles and trying to concentrate and innovate in other areas and the switch is certainly innovative with its portable and non-portable you know uh that advancement but that advancement does not dictate so far for the most part a particular gameplay experience especially since you i don't even know if you're allowed to do this but especially since
John:
The games that have been released so far don't say you can only play this in portable mode because it requires a touchscreen.
John:
They're also playable on the television, which means you can't make a game that requires a touchscreen that is also able to be played on the TV, and then it's no longer a Switch.
John:
It's just a portable game, right?
John:
Maybe Nintendo will allow people to do that eventually.
John:
But as far as I'm aware, for now, they're not allowing people to do that.
John:
All I want to say is that I haven't seen any synergy between software and the hardware, which means...
John:
The advantage I was talking about Nintendo, as long as there's a market for dedicated game consoles, Nintendo can be successful and survive, because then they can do that thing that Nintendo has always done, which is make an amazing product that requires a synergy of hardware and software, somewhat like Apple has had a reputation for doing over the many years.
John:
But Breath of the Wild could have been a PS4 game and probably would have been better on PS4.
John:
And I would have been happier if Breath of the Wild ran on hardware that was more powerful.
John:
Now, that's just me.
John:
Some people may want a really good portable system, in which case they don't want Breath of the Wild on PS4.
John:
They want it on Switch because they love playing it in a portable thing on the go and, you know, upstairs in the bed or whatever.
John:
Like...
John:
that makes it a successful handheld but again doesn't say anything specific about it other than like you know why couldn't have been a uh god i'm sorry sony i can't remember the name of your stupid most recent uh handheld that is not successful chat room what the hell is the vita sorry the nsx no no the vita
John:
play playstation vita and did they have what was the one after the vita god i can't even keep track this lag is killing me i think the vita is the most recent anyway uh people who love the handheld there you know there have been handhelds before now i understand the switch thing being able to take off the little controls and use them separately so there is some innovation there but it doesn't have the same synergy with with the games as other stuff is that it doesn't mean it's not going to this is very early days um thing that you know new games are going to come out all the time we'll see how they go and i
John:
The Switch is successful.
John:
People like it.
John:
The software is good.
John:
It can still be a successful product.
John:
But my personal grade for it is that they are not competitive with the two other big consoles.
John:
Nintendo was always an also-ran because they make less powerful hardware.
John:
And within the realm of less powerful hardware...
John:
Their track record of being able to make innovations that have profound effects on gameplay and vice versa has been hit or miss over the years.
John:
And the Switch is kind of like a base hit in that people like it and it does what it's supposed to do well, but...
John:
it seems like it is just a way for you to play the same old console games that you could always play portably and on the TV, which is an innovation because that's what people like about it.
John:
Like, I don't have to choose between some cut-down portable game versus a full-fledged TV one, but that innovation succeeds by being somewhere in the middle.
John:
It's not as good on the TV as the dedicated TV consoles, but it's better portably than some of the weaker-powered portable consoles also still made by Nintendo, like the 3DS.
John:
So...
John:
it you know it may be the right product at the right time and certainly i think we can all say that uh it has a brighter future as far as anyone can tell than the wii u did and the wii was arguably much more arguably much more innovative it just you know the the game sort never materialized but i think this launch and the fact they had to make the switch and the fact that they had to cut out the features from the wii u version so it didn't appear to be the better version of the game than the switch version are all kind of
John:
disappointing markers of this difficult period in nintendo's history but i'm glad they're i'm glad they're recovering after the wii u and i'm glad the switch does appear to be more successful and i wish them all the success in the world i just wish they would uh the product that i want them to make is not the switch but if the switch if the switch is what they have to make for me to get breath of the wild to make them successful again you know i can live with it but that's why i'm giving them like a b b minus uh so far
Casey:
It's funny you say that because when the Switch first came out, well, we talked about this some, but when the promo video or teaser video, whatever it was, came out, I was like, wow, that looks actually really cool.
Casey:
And then when it first came out, I thought, you know, that still looks really cool.
Casey:
And then I've played with my sister-in-laws and with some friends of ours a couple of times very briefly.
Casey:
Wow, it's pretty cool.
Casey:
And for the last month or however long it's been out, I've been trying to convince myself that I don't play games anymore, which is accurate, that the last time I bought a console, I played it for a couple of months and never touched it again, which is accurate.
Casey:
And thus, there is no reason to spend a whole bunch of money on a Switch, which I will probably use for a month and then never use again, which I presume to be accurate.
Casey:
That being said, just earlier tonight, I realized the super useful website iStockNow, which I knew is tracking Apple inventory for things like AirPods and whatnot.
Casey:
They actually track inventory for the Switch.
Casey:
And I am strongly considering making a trip to a neighboring town to pick up a Switch for myself tomorrow in no small part because I know I'm going to have a couple of long plane rides in my future.
Casey:
And that seems like it'd be a really great way to spend some time on the plane.
Casey:
And so here it is.
Casey:
I am the antithesis of a typical console buyer, which is to say I don't buy consoles.
Casey:
I don't tend to play video games, and I feel like this console was made for me.
John:
yeah maybe like it's a successful vita oh it's a for a lot of people that's how they're viewing it like it is the best portable system i've ever had because the games on it are so amazing compared to i mean again granted they're being pulled up the average by having breath of the wild on it but you know it's it's like imagine if there was a portable system they got the best first party titles from one of the best first party developers in the world that's the switch but i'm not interested in portable so that doesn't really help me much but it does that does mean that the product is potentially more appealing than the wii u which
John:
had to sit in this weird uh middle ground but yeah um i and i'm surprised that you are into it playing in a portable and that because you have pretty big hands as well and i find the size of it is not not conducive to my hands obviously i have rsi issues on top of everything else but it just feels a little bit awkward and i've been playing with the the nintendo pro controller and it's no gamecube controller but
John:
It's okay.
John:
For a controller that doesn't have an octagonal surround around the analog sticks and thinks all the buttons are equally important, it's okay.
John:
Like, it's not great, but I like it better than the Wii U Pro Controller, which maybe isn't saying much, but it's something.
Casey:
great episode of hypercritical or greatest episode of hypercritical it was an episode that exists oh wow worst you are the worst which episode was that do you know offhand yeah i know i don't know pinching the harmonica it's a classic but you don't know an episode number in the in the 50s in the 50s i'm gonna guess
John:
all right i'll look it up you google for syracuse of pinching the harmonica it's gonna be the number one hit i guarantee you this sounds like a dangerous query i don't know if i yeah don't do an image search just regular text search and you'll you'll find it uh 49 you were very close and we caught you saying your own name twice in the last week caught me is this a secret thing yes i'll say i'll say it all day say all night all day
Marco:
Except that when you were having a whole episode of Rectives about how no one pronounces your name right, you never said it.
John:
I just don't want to encourage him.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
You can't give him what he wants.
John:
He's incorrigible.
Casey:
yeah that's it poor merlin don't don't you give him your pity he does not deserve it well you're bad cop today aren't you that's how this is oh goodness all right so marco what do you think about the switch i mean i know that tiff has has gotten herself one or well maybe it was for you but it's effectively hers i don't remember what the backstory was but like have you played it at all remind me what your scenario is with that
Marco:
I played the Wipeout clone for a few minutes, and that was fun.
Casey:
That's right, that's right.
Marco:
Yeah, but that's it so far.
Marco:
I expect to play Mario Kart probably quite a bit.
Marco:
Oh, amen, brother.
Marco:
But that isn't out until the end of this month, I think.
Marco:
And also the Puyo Puyo Tetris, which I know from my Sega days as Dr. Robotnik's Mean Bean Machine Tetris.
Marco:
I will probably be enjoying that as well when that comes out, which I believe is also around Mario Kart time.
Marco:
And then whenever there's ever a Mario game for it, I will like that.
Marco:
If there's ever a virtual console that allows me to catch up a little bit on previous Mario games, as we previously discussed, I would like that.
Marco:
But otherwise, you know, yeah, I'm not that into it because I'm not that into games.
Marco:
I'm...
Marco:
I'm like you, but I've already bought it, and I've realized that.
John:
There is a Mario game coming, by the way, in case you're wondering.
John:
There totally is one.
Marco:
Yeah, but it's a 3D one.
John:
I don't like 3D.
John:
Those are the real ones now.
Marco:
No, they're not.
John:
Yeah, but it's a 3D.
John:
Everyone else is saying, finally, a real Mario game instead of one of these nostalgic throwback 2.5D things.
Marco:
Yeah, no, I want more 2.5D.
Marco:
To me, that's what Mario games are.
Marco:
The 3D ones always felt like they were good games, but they didn't feel like Mario games to me.
Marco:
They felt like a different thing.
Marco:
You're so stuck in the past.
Marco:
No, it's just... I know you like your 2D games.
John:
You're playing through Sonic, for crying out loud.
John:
I know you like 2D, but I love the 3D ones better, and I think they're just... It's a different kind of game.
John:
Yeah, I suppose.
John:
I mean, I was surprised by how, I mean, I talked about this on, I think it was on RecDiffs, about how games that I loved in the 2D era made the transition to 3D, and I still love them, even though, like you said, it is a totally different game.
John:
Like, Zelda in 2D versus Zelda in 3D, very different.
John:
Mechanically, visually, like, so many things about it are different, and Mario, same thing, and yet I still feel like this is a through line.
John:
I still feel like it's the same game, the same kind of feeling.
John:
The difference is that once they went 3D, I couldn't go back to the 2D ones anymore.
John:
It's like, well, why would I want to just jump up and down 2D?
Marco:
I want to jump up and down a 3D world.
Marco:
It's such different mechanics.
Marco:
Certain games, like back in the 8 and 16-bit era, racing games, like Mario Kart for Super Nintendo,
Marco:
played that game for so long.
Marco:
It was such a great game.
Marco:
But fundamentally, you were really navigating a 3D world.
Marco:
It just happened to be rendered in crude 2D that was trying to approximate it.
Marco:
And it was a lot of tapping because you didn't have analog sticks.
Marco:
So tapping was all about tapping the D-pad.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But the point is like, you know,
Marco:
Translating Mario Kart from 2D to 3D just made it better.
Marco:
It didn't fundamentally produce a different kind of game.
Marco:
You were already conceptually moving in 3D and it just made it better.
Marco:
But a platform game is an incredibly different playing game between 2D and 3D.
Marco:
Everything you can do is totally different.
Marco:
A lot of 2D stuff does not work in 3D and vice versa.
Marco:
So it is a totally different kind of game.
Marco:
And what made me so sad during the 32 and 64-bit console era was that all of my favorite 2D franchises were basically killed off for like 10 years while they made 3D versions.
Marco:
And that was fine, but it wasn't the same thing.
Marco:
I know I've had this rant before recently, so I'll stop it here, but...
Marco:
2D Mario and 3D Mario are different games.
Marco:
And for a while, they didn't continue both.
Marco:
And I'm glad they, in recent years, have continued both.
Marco:
And I would love to play some of those new 2 slash 2.5D Mario games.
Marco:
And by new, I just mean made after the 90s.
Marco:
So I know they're not new anymore for gamers, but for me, they would be new.
Marco:
And I would love to play them, but I wouldn't love to play them enough to go buy a Wii U or something.
Marco:
So I'm hoping they come to a virtual console on the Switch in some form.
John:
So you said that they're totally different games and I understand what you're saying in terms of like mechanically speaking, but the reason I feel like there's a through line, uh, is not so much like how do you control it and what is the, you know, what is on the screen and like, you know, how does the game work?
John:
But sort of the, uh,
John:
I don't know, I don't want to say the spirit of the game, but Mario is about running and jumping.
John:
That you are exercising your athletic ability, this little character who's going to navigate the world that's full of hazard, it's full of things that you touch to kill you, pits that you fall into, enemies that hurt you when they touch you, and you are running and jumping.
John:
And I feel like Mario 3D...
John:
captured more than any game that had tried to do a similar thing before it and that's why it's such an important game captured the fun of running and jumping what is fun about running around and jumping that's and yes it's totally different you're in 3d space the whole rules of the world are different like it's not like you know you you live if you're traveling downward on the enemy but if you're traveling upward you die like all this all the all the mechanics of the old game every rule system every sort of
John:
how it controls in the air, how run works, you know, holding down B to run, like all that stuff went away and was replaced with something entirely different.
John:
And yet I still feel like this is a game about the joy of running and jumping.
John:
Same thing with Zelda, which was about exploring a world, big, scary, dangerous world that you don't understand that, you know, that goes on for a long distance that you have to slowly discover the mysteries of and collect items and become more powerful and eventually solve, uh, you know, uh,
John:
solve a mystery and defeat an enemy and complete a story and the change to 3d was like you thought exploring was fun in 2d it's even more fun when it's 3d with better graphics and breath of the wild says you thought it was fun exploring like the idea of exploring well this world is humongous and your exploring is no longer constrained in the ways it used to be
John:
all those games feel like yes zelda is about exploration and conquest and mystery and you know uh defeating an enemy and story and that's the through line i see even though mechanically speaking the game has varied a lot so i think it really depends on what you were what part of the game uh
John:
um you were there for if you were there for the mechanics and the mechanics change when it's like well this is a different game but if you were there for the joy of running and jumping and this and this new game in 3d even more thoroughly embodies the joy of running and jumping that you will like the 3d games um
John:
So obviously, you know, beside of that, I'm on and that I think I'm at the point where I can say I didn't even like the mechanics of the 2D ones.
John:
It's just that was the best incarnation of a game that made it, you know, that you got to experience the fun of running around and jumping.
John:
And then when they went to 3D, I just discarded the 2D.
John:
I'm like, well, I get more of that here.
John:
But if you like the 2D mechanics, the 3D one has nothing for you.
John:
You're just waiting for the 2.5D games.
Casey:
Did you guys play F-Zero on the Super Nintendo?
Casey:
Oh, yeah, of course.
Casey:
I'm mostly looking at Marco.
John:
Or on the N64, frame locked at 60 frames per second.
Marco:
Yeah, it looked awesome at 60 frames.
Marco:
There were basically no polygons, but it looked awesome.
John:
That's the right trade-off for that game.
Casey:
Yeah, I would say.
Casey:
I love that game so darn much.
Casey:
My goodness, did I love that game.
Marco:
I will say, though, one of the reasons why I've always liked Wipeout and Mario Kart is that racing games are fun, but racing games with weapons are a lot more fun.
Marco:
And that was one thing I always missed with F-Zero.
Marco:
I enjoyed going really fast and stuff, but I wanted to occasionally be able to fire a missile at Casey, and I couldn't do that.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
And speaking of games like we were playing, I'm still playing Breath of the Wild, obviously, and I got the chance to try out the thing that I was suggesting Marco try out, but that he said he tried and didn't like, which is Breath of the Wild as essentially a party game.
John:
We had some company over and we had like, you know, a couple of adults and their kids.
John:
and all of us just sitting in the same room, playing Breath of the Wild, which is a single-player game, together as a party game.
John:
Because, especially if you have someone who's... You have the person who's ostensibly controlling the game, but then you have an entire room full of people who have opinions about what should be done next, or what you should try, or just laughing at the results of the most recent experiment.
John:
Because even just playing Breath of the Wild single-player is a constant series of distractions.
John:
Just try progressing the story quest.
John:
You can't do it, because it's like...
John:
Oh, what's that over there?
John:
Oh, what's this?
John:
Oh, I want to do this.
John:
And you'll find yourself 20 degrees removed from what you thought you were doing and you're having fun the whole time.
John:
And if you have a room full of people who are also engaged with that, even though none of them are actually playing, telling you, spotting something out of the corner of their eye that you didn't see or getting excited about something that happened or giving you a suggestion about something to try.
John:
it worked very well maybe it wouldn't work well as you get deep into the game people start to suss out what the mechanics are but for a room full of people um half of which had never even seen breath of the wild it was hilarious and fun and the most fun i've had quote unquote playing a video game in a large group even though again one person had the controller and it was not me um in a long time and that's what i was suggesting marco do with uh when tiff is playing but apparently he's still just bored and falls asleep and adam is her co-pilot
John:
well to be honest marco's about to fall asleep anyway that's true for different reasons this is before he went to ireland he was still falling asleep on the couch he's an old man he's got a beard now he just like put him on the couch and three seconds later his eyes are closed and he's snoring and then you wake up he says i was just resting my eyes
Marco:
Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Betterment, Jamf, and MailRoute.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Casey:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S, so that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Casey:
It's accidental, they didn't mean to.
Casey:
Let's talk about something really important.
Casey:
Let's talk about WWDC lunches in indescribable detail.
Casey:
So this came up a couple of shows ago.
Casey:
I forget exactly how, but I guess it was when we were talking about the change from Moscone to wherever we are in San Jose.
Casey:
And one of us, might have been me, brought up the WWDC lunches.
Casey:
And I think the two of you kind of immediately poo-pooed them.
Casey:
And I said, oh, really, they're not that bad.
Casey:
And I think John made a joke about, oh, we should talk about that in great detail another time.
Casey:
And it turns out John wasn't.
Casey:
entirely joking.
Casey:
And a better man would not bring this up and say it's a stupid idea, but I am not that man and I'm anxious to talk about WWDC launches in great detail.
Casey:
This is amazing.
Casey:
I have scoured the internet.
Marco:
So just to be clear, we are talking about
Marco:
The conference center box lunches for an event that is no longer happening in that conference center and will no longer have this particular box lunch series.
Marco:
And also, the event itself is not happening for another almost two months from now.
Marco:
And this is what we're talking about right now.
Marco:
Oh, I love you guys so much.
John:
Two shows worth of Mac Pro stuff made Casey willing to talk about literally anything else.
Casey:
Literally anything else.
Casey:
Or since I've just finished Parks and Rec, I will talk about literally anything right now other than the Mac Pro.
Casey:
Anyway, so John, why don't you tell us about WWDC box launches?
John:
Yeah, so this came up in the talking about the conference and the things that are good and bad about it.
John:
Maybe we were talking about Ottawa and stuff like that.
John:
And here's the thing about WWDC.
John:
It's an expensive conference.
John:
It's expensive to put on, I'm sure.
John:
It's in an expensive city.
John:
Things in conference centers, if you've never put on a conference yourself or talked to anybody who has, are absurdly expensive, much more expensive than you think they are because there's a lot of other costs built into them.
John:
um apple usually has i think in general pretty good food and drink options especially considering the scale i mean granted it's not like 50 000 people like a you know a really giant convention but 5 000 people there's nothing to sneeze at if you're trying to give snacks and drinks 5 000 people it's really easy to cheap out and apple in general tries to do better they have like donuts and danishes which are you know
John:
reasonable quality daunts and danishness some of them i actually like like marco mentions usually one that's really good i think a lot of them are actually really good i have no idea how the coffee is because i don't drink it um the bagels are garbage well you know san francisco come on obviously bagels on the west coast um
John:
for the drinks when they had odd wall odd wall is a fairly expensive i think high high quality beverage it's not like they're putting out rc cola for everybody right apologies to the rc fans um so i think as far as conference goes like they're certainly not really the top of the heap maybe they're not even above average for this for these things i just listened but they're
John:
They're about average.
John:
I've definitely been to conferences that have much better food, but also much, much worse.
John:
So I think they're doing okay for all those things.
John:
By the way, all those things, and also like fresh fruit and other stuff that you get out in the hallways, pretty good.
John:
Also probably astronomically expensive if you were to add up like, how much does this one muffin I picked up cost apple?
John:
You know, oh great, $27 for this muffin?
John:
Yum, yum, yum.
John:
Doesn't make it taste any better, but just to get the scale of the cost here.
John:
Oh my God.
John:
It's much more expensive than you think.
John:
But then we come to the lunches, and the lunches are not at any different scale than anything else, because
John:
when they put out like the snack foods and the things and like when you're lining up to get into presidio for the keynote every every five one of those 5 000 people or however many people are there take something from there like the food goes it's not as if it's you know that the lunch is 10 times bigger than the snacks they put out enough snacks and enough drinks for all the people who are in the conference if they wanted them all right and so lunch is the same deal a lot of people go out to lunch so it's you know the same kind of ratio but
John:
I'm not sure what happens for the lunch food because it's the same problem.
John:
How do you feed a reasonable quality product to a large group of people, right?
John:
So you have all the same problems of scale and, you know, packaged food versus freshly made, you know, or all the same problems.
John:
And yet somehow,
John:
For lunch in particular, they blow it.
John:
They are well below average, even below Apple's own average.
John:
For example, if you have ever been to an Apple Tech Talk, I think the food of the Tech Talks is better than this lunch food.
John:
maybe because it's not i think even the lunches are they give similar little box lunches so anyway this is what the lunch is like you line up with everybody else and you go across across a big series of tables they do a good job with traffic flow like you know the lines move it's massively distributed it's a parallel architecture kind of like altivec for the old folks uh you know
John:
single instruction multiple developer huh huh all right um and lots of tables with maybe three choices you got the chicken the beef and the vegetarian option and there's a bunch of plastic clear plastic boxes that have three areas in them there's the main area where they're going to put the main part of your lunch there's one little corner of the thing that is kind of like a desserty thing and then there's like a side dish thing
John:
And somehow they managed to find the most inappropriate things to put inside this vessel.
John:
Their most common failure mode is to pick something that needs to be...
John:
crispy or dry in some way and to put it inside this container that traps moisture so that whatever your sandwich or piece of bread or whatever thing is sitting in is next to some wet side dish or something that seeps into the bread and there's nothing worse than picking up a sandwich that has been sitting there in liquid for a long period of time before you got to it
John:
same thing with any any kind of bread that requires freshness or staleness or whatever to you know not not being stale to be good that that is the crux of making this dish good and you get it with some kind of styrofoam like bread substance on it or putting spreads on like putting like mustard or mayonnaise or other kind of wet spreads on the bread but putting them directly against the bread instead of in between the layers so they soak into the bread and
John:
for the side dishes there's not much you can do with side dishes because it's got to be it's room temperature it's not hot but they will very often put side dishes that should be hot in a room temperature container which is the wrong thing to be putting there and the desserts like that's such an easy win just give us a damn chocolate chip cookie put a piece of chocolate cake in there like it's not hard like these things keep you know you can buy pre-packaged ones put it
John:
Put two chips ahoy in.
John:
Like, you would kill... At a certain point, you would kill for chips ahoy.
John:
And instead, these are, like, these handmade, like, supposed to be sugary sweet confections that are... That taste like, you know, taste like ashes in your mouth.
John:
Like, they're just... They're just...
John:
terrible little squares of potentially sweet thing again also alternately stale and soggy and there's no reason for this there's no reason to try to make an artisanal perfect beautiful complicated sophisticated thing you gotta put in foods that taste good and will keep and that's what they do on the outside like donuts keep danishes keep right a banana keeps oddball in the container keeps but when it comes to lunch they i feel like they're trying to make like these beautifully prepared chef dishes and then shoveling them into plastic and let them just stew there and
John:
It is a terrible, terrible experience.
John:
And I say this as someone who has had probably more box lunches on average than most attendees who WWDC.
John:
Because I get the box lunch pretty much every day because I don't want to go out and have to come back.
John:
I just want to run down there quickly, get my lunch, eat it, and then go get in line for the next thing.
John:
So I eat all these things, but sometimes even I would, you know...
John:
in a hurry to be utilitarian just can't make it just can't make it through the food and you just sometimes you just take one forkful of that side dish and you're like all right that's no that's it i'm done and eat half of the soggy sandwich or you just leave the bottom half of the sandwich down there and you just eat the top half or and i wish i could remember i should have recorded these in film sometimes they don't do sandwiches sometimes there's other kind of lunch things
John:
and sometimes it's just literally inedible it's like there's there's no food to be had here this was i don't know what this is even supposed to be here be dragons it tastes terrible it looks terrible uh it has to be eaten with a fork out of this little container and i feel like i'm on like a spaceship eating one of those you know space food that comes out of a tube or something so
Casey:
This topic was so worth it.
Casey:
The funny thing is, I actually don't think they're that bad.
Casey:
Like, nothing you said is wrong.
Casey:
I'm not disagreeing with anything you said.
Casey:
I just think I'm less bothered by it.
Casey:
Generally speaking, I find the sandwiches to be perfectly acceptable.
Casey:
They are not great sandwiches.
Casey:
I'm even hard-pressed to say they're good.
Casey:
They're just fine.
Casey:
I don't typically run into the bread sogginess problem, but again, I agree with what you said that they definitely pair things that will create a bread sogginess vortex, so you are not wrong.
John:
And also like the quality of the ingredients between the bread, like whatever they put there, whether it's a cold cut or a piece of chicken or some arugula or lettuce, it's always like the most, the worst form of that.
John:
So if it's chicken, the chicken is just dry as chalk.
John:
If it is lettuce, lettuce is completely wilted.
John:
You know, if it's ham, the ham tastes like it's entirely made of filler and like a pig walked by at once.
Casey:
Oh my God.
Casey:
Oh my God.
Casey:
I can't continue.
Marco:
I'm dead.
Marco:
So I'm with you, Casey.
Marco:
I don't actually... I've also eaten a lot of these.
Marco:
Not as many as John has, because I will usually try to escape the conference center for lunch at least a couple of the days.
Marco:
But I've eaten a good number of them.
Marco:
And to me, they're always...
Marco:
Not great, but they're always better than I expect them to be.
Marco:
I look at them and I have very low expectations because they are these mass-produced, clearly well ahead of time.
Marco:
Usually, they're not room temperatures.
Marco:
Usually, they're cold.
Marco:
The whole box is cold.
Marco:
I assume they're sitting in a fridge for a few hours between preparation or manufacturing, I guess.
Marco:
But anyway, they're always to me like...
Marco:
About the quality of modern-day airplane food on a decent airline.
Marco:
So it's not as bad as you expect and actually not that bad.
Marco:
And it mostly tastes like nothing, but you don't really care.
Marco:
If it has any flavor at all, the flavor is from the salad dressing that they use to moisten the sandwich and provide some flavor.
Marco:
That's really where all the flavor comes from.
Marco:
So it just tastes like...
Marco:
Some cold lettuce and chicken with a little bit of salad dressing on it.
Marco:
And that's fine.
John:
I think the comparison to airplane food is good because I get that same sense from airplane food in that it tastes like it's dead.
John:
It tastes like it's from... I was going to reference a Stephen King story that neither of you have even heard of and no one who's listening has read.
John:
But anyway, it tastes like...
John:
all of the sort of life has been sucked out of it and an airplane it's a lot about like you being you know different cabin pressure and recycled air and in a small space and all the other things that make planes weird right but this is on the ground where it looks like a sandwich but when you bite it all you can feel is the texture and there's like literally no taste or if there is taste it's a bad taste and that's what you know and the dressing they put on to try to be fancy that has made the bread all soggy and gross and the bread already wasn't very good like all you get is like
John:
the feeling of eating foam rubber, and then a momentary tang of the terrible mustard spread or vinegar thing that they put on it.
John:
And it's a lot like being on the airplane because you buy your $20 sandwich, and it's like you realize the sandwich has become a homogenous solid, that it is no longer a bunch of individual ingredients.
John:
You bite into it, and again, all you experience is the varying textures of the things, but nothing has any taste.
Marco:
I've never had as negative a reaction as you have to these.
Marco:
Usually when I'm eating them, I'm paying attention to what I'm eating for at most one bite, but I'm also usually thinking about what I just saw in sessions, or I'm talking to you guys or other people who are around, or whatever else, and so I'm not...
Marco:
Like, before I know it, I have consumed the mass that's in this plastic container, and I have not given a second thought to it.
Marco:
And I'm drinking some kind of sugary, disgusting, like, iced tea thing or something, and it's fine.
John:
Oh, that terrible iced tea.
John:
What is it?
Marco:
An S-T?
Marco:
I know some people like that.
Marco:
It's Lipton canned iced tea, which is full of sugar.
Casey:
Yeah, why can't they serve us a proper, like, carbonated beverage?
Casey:
Why is that so hard?
Casey:
Now, I shouldn't be...
Casey:
I shouldn't be that grumpy.
Marco:
No, they have other carbonated beverages.
Marco:
I just don't take them.
John:
Really bad lemonade is one of their choices, and really bad iced tea is their other choice.
Casey:
That's correct.
Casey:
Oh, they don't have sodas in there?
Casey:
Not during lunch.
Casey:
That's the thing.
Casey:
They'll put them out at snack time, but they won't do it.
Casey:
God, I sound like a four-year-old.
Casey:
They'll put it out at snack time.
John:
They put out the mats for the naps.
John:
That's when they bring it out.
Casey:
yeah right but uh but no there's no um there's no soda during lunch which drives me batty because you're exactly right like the real issue here is that it's crappy it's crappy lemonade or well i don't drink iced tea but my understanding is like you guys said it's crappy iced tea i mean to be fair like i'm not even sure i would call that iced tea like there's it's it's just a ton of sugar yeah i'm not sure what the tea flavor is in it i mean they're just it's just like terribly sickly sweet sugary liquid
Marco:
Yeah, it tastes very little like actual iced tea.
Marco:
It tastes a lot more like... And, like, I always grab it thinking, like, I don't want all the sugar of soda.
Marco:
Let me grab this iced tea.
Marco:
And, of course, it has just as much, if not more, sugar as most soda.
Marco:
And it's every time just like... It's so sweet.
Marco:
But, no, I mean...
Marco:
I've never found them that offensive.
Marco:
And I wonder, John, are you just making bad choices?
Marco:
Normally, when you approach the rows of tables that have all these on them, you're usually given about three options, and it'll usually be something along the lines of chicken, roast beef, and vegetarian.
Marco:
Given that choice, John, which do you pick?
Marco:
Because I'll tell you what, I would never pick roast beef.
Marco:
I would usually, in that case, pick the chicken option.
John:
Well, the only one I could say, I pretty much never pick as vegetarian.
John:
I've picked vegetarian maybe twice out of, like, you know, the 30 days I've been at WREC so far in my life.
John:
And it has been a terrible mistake every time because I have not liked them, right?
John:
So for the other choices...
John:
I feel like I've rotated pretty well because I'm desperately in search of something I can find edible.
John:
So it's not like I'm saying if it's chicken and beef, I always pick beef.
John:
I'm about 50-50 on the choices, and I'm not going with what I think I would like better if both were made well.
John:
I'm entirely going on
John:
like eyeballing them and saying, does that look like it's going to be like, for example, like I've learned it's best for me to avoid a wraps.
John:
So if I have a choice between anything in a wrap and something, not in a wrap, it's best to avoid wraps because the wraps really emphasize the homogenous solid thing.
John:
Like whatever the constituent ingredients were, they wrap it all up, put it together, make it all soggy, put it in a fridge.
John:
And it just becomes this like giant hunk of cookie dough.
John:
Only it doesn't taste like cookies and,
John:
and doesn't matter what they put in it and so i and because there'll be like vegetables in there terrible meat will be mixed into the thing some kind of liquid or mayo and then they're wrapping on the outside all soggy and cold and all completely tasteless so in general i avoid wraps and i will prefer avoiding the wraps over the particular thing in them i have learned that chicken is super dangerous if it's thick because it always ends up being very very dry
John:
But other than that, I'm willing to give almost anything to try.
John:
I'm willing to believe that this one is going to be the one that is not completely vile.
John:
And most of the time, I can get through it.
John:
Because, again, you're sitting there talking to people or whatever.
John:
But I do find myself briefly distracted while sitting there eating my thing to go...
John:
Oh, this is terrible.
John:
I can't even believe it.
John:
Then you just continue going.
John:
Sometimes I just can't get through it.
John:
Side dishes have the lowest percentage for me.
John:
It's just a write-off.
John:
I don't pick based on the side dishes.
John:
I assume all the side dishes will be terrible.
Casey:
That is pretty accurate, to be honest.
Casey:
That's the thing.
Casey:
To me, the sandwich to me is usually okay.
Casey:
I agree that the meat is maybe ham adjacent rather than ham.
Casey:
The bread may be a little wetter than you want, but it's edible.
Casey:
It's usually fine.
Casey:
And the dessert, oftentimes I don't care for the particular flavor of the dessert because, as an example, and this may not even be accurate, but I don't like cranberries.
Casey:
So maybe it's like a cranberry-based dessert.
Casey:
And so that's a Casey problem, not a dessert problem.
Casey:
But the side dish tends to be pretty esoteric, in my personal opinion.
Casey:
And I agree with you.
Casey:
Probably four times out of five just gets written off.
Marco:
The one thing with the side dish to me is that – so it is also the same general formula of like we'll take some bland ingredients and we will apply some kind of salad dressing to them to generate flavor.
Marco:
The main problem I have with the side dish is I almost always actually enjoy them.
Marco:
But they always taste completely unexpected from how I thought they should taste based on how they looked.
Marco:
Because whatever pairings they make between the salad dressing or whatever is giving them the flavor and the ingredients in them, it looks nothing like it tastes.
Marco:
And again, it's usually good enough.
Marco:
I usually like it.
Marco:
But I'm always shocked by what is in my mouth after I've seen it.
John:
i also have i think one of the things that uh makes me predisposed to not like most of these things is you're super especially especially for things like side dishes like i said very often they will put things inside dishes that i expect to be served not not cold or not at room temperature so any rice-based side dish i know plenty of you know people like rice at room temperature or there are rice dishes that are you know room temperature but when i see a rice-based side dish i
John:
i don't expect it to be cold i don't want to eat cold rice period no matter what is in it um and you know same thing for things like potato salad can be cold which is fine but depending on what if they make a side dish that looks like it's like roast potatoes i don't want room temperature roast potatoes who wants room temperature roast but never mind that that the potatoes are probably not good the second they came out of the oven but certainly after sitting in that little container stewing in that little
John:
steamy Dagobah pit inside there.
John:
You do not want those roast potatoes.
John:
And Marco's totally right about that.
John:
They taste weirder than you think because they're not... You can't categorize them.
John:
That's why very often the most pertinent question at any WWC lunch table is...
John:
what is the side dish like you can't categorize you can't say it's green beans it's potato salad it's corn it's like like sometimes it's a puzzle just to say forget about giving a name to this thing let's just take for granted this has no name can you identify the constituent ingredients
John:
what there's a green thing there's a white thing and there's a yellow thing everyone what do you think the yellow thing is is it squash is it potato is it onion you have to put it in your mouth and you're like i'm still not sure because it's covered in some weird liquid or something i seem to recall one that was like chopped up celery and then like cubes of cucumber and like onions with like a green sprinkly stuff on it and then like
John:
a cream-based dressing it's like you're just making stuff up like it's not that's not anything i don't know i don't know what that's supposed to be uh and yeah like it's i never know what they're going to taste like i can't predict which ones i'm going to even be able to tolerate but it's usually a lot of them as one forkful and then it's like never mind
John:
that's why you save snacks by the way pro pro tip that's why in the morning when they have the good danishes and stuff uh find a way to uh successfully save those in your backpack without them destroying all your stuff like piece tupperware or something put the snacks in your purse i don't but i should what i do is i save bananas because they are i don't have a container like that but i would love to be able to save donuts or danishes because those are good right instead what i end up saving are bananas because they come with their own wrapper and you can put them in your backpack and in general
John:
Just don't forget they're in there.
John:
If you take a banana and save it so you have desperation food at lunch, do not forget that banana is in there because if you leave it for a few days at the bottom of your backpack that you're sliding your MacBook in and out of, it's a bad scene.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
It has never happened to me, but I'm very conscious of it.
Casey:
You know, I'm a little sad that, well, I wasn't able to go to this place last year because it shut down, I think, in 2015.
Casey:
But what was the name of that?
Casey:
Oh, Witchcraft, I think it was.
Marco:
I mean, the good thing is it's a chain.
Marco:
You can get them all over the place, but just not there anymore.
Casey:
Yeah, there was a really good witchcraft that was right around the corner that I liked.
Casey:
I would typically go and meet like a buddy from Apple or someone else that was local at witchcraft one of the days during lunch.
Casey:
There's also a burger place that I've been to a couple times.
Casey:
God, I'm drawing a blank the name of it.
Casey:
There's a couple of them that are close to Moscone.
Casey:
again they're obviously a chain and so i'm sure they exist other places too um but there's some sort of burger place super duper um that is right down the road from moscone that's that's very good as well i always think of dave nanny when i see it like hey it's that backup burger backup burger super duper the backup program
Casey:
oh oh i get it i get it i get i'm an idiot i get it i think i took a picture of that sign to send him last time i was there so yeah so anyway so i'm kind of bummed that uh i may not have the chance to eat at any of those places and like i said uh witchcraft had already shut down which i don't get because it was so tasty but anyway uh but yeah i i typically eat the lunches i think i'm in the same boat as marco in that i do go out from time to time but i do generally eat the the the lunches
Casey:
Probably three days out of five.
Casey:
And I don't find myself deeply offended by them.
Casey:
I would not say they're good.
Casey:
I would not say they're great.
Casey:
But I would not necessarily say they're actively bad.
Casey:
They just kind of exist.
Casey:
What do they say about the Mac Mini?
Casey:
It's a product in our lineup.
Casey:
This is a lunch that is in Moscone.
Marco:
I'm with you, Casey.
Marco:
I was very happy with that.
Marco:
No, I would say very happy.
Marco:
I was consistently satisfied by them.
Marco:
And this is what you need.
Marco:
If you're going to be in the business of mass lunch, what you need is consistency and minimum acceptability.
Marco:
And I think they delivered that.
Marco:
They were never great.
John:
but i'd never had one where i was just like oh this is disgusting i can't eat this like it was it was always fine often weird but always fine i didn't know you as you both had such such a high opinion of this because well it's not that we have if we're ever in wwc together again and if we ever have lunches of this calorie again i don't interrogate you in real time to say that thing that you're eating let us discuss it in detail right now because my opinion of it is that like
John:
i think they are pretty consistent like they were consistently below average for me like none of i did there were no highlights i can think of that one time they had the really good lunch i can't think of that at all they were always below average and it was just a question of how low like none of them none of them gave me food poisoning so i'm not gonna say they're like you know super terrible that's good yeah that's a high bar well i'm pretty sure we found our live venue for our next i was
Casey:
i was gonna say like if ever there was a purpose for periscope for if ever there was a purpose for periscope it's that moment when when we're all together and we're discussing how bad the wwdc lunches are trying to guess what the side dish is right yeah exactly it's a new it's a new spinoff podcast guess the side dish what is this
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Everyone's talking, Underscore's telling us about all the limitations of all the new APIs that he has already found.
Marco:
And we're all trying to figure out what the heck this side dish is that we're eating.
Marco:
So true.
John:
And then if we ever figure it out and identify the ingredients, then we have to come up with a name for it.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
This has legs.
Casey:
We should run with this.
Casey:
But in true San Franciscan style, they just serve the minimum viable lunch.
Casey:
And that's what you get.