Notch-Savvy
John:
i didn't see i didn't see you out there uh swimming in the waves in fact i've never seen you swimming in them you gotta there's a reason for that that's the next level of your beach education learning how to swim in the ocean yeah that's that's unlikely because the ocean is full of things that eat you and stuff and that's they're not gonna eat you it's fine don't you see all the people playing they live they go back to their homes it's fine most of them yeah every day every day this the jellyfish are just taking people
Casey:
So we haven't spoken to each other in like a week and a half, two weeks, something like that.
Casey:
But we are back together again, back on the normal schedule.
Casey:
We'll be back on the normal schedule as far as we know for at least a little while, probably until the holidays start picking up.
Casey:
And, you know, if things are going to go back to normal, we have to do what we always do.
Casey:
And that is your favorite segment and mine and especially John's.
Marco:
Ask ATP.
Casey:
Yeah, that's it.
Casey:
No, it's follow up.
Casey:
So we are starting with the streaming music iPod shuffle like thing, which is apparently something that that Spotify or I don't know if it's for is it first party?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Anyway, it's a thing that's for Spotify that's called Mighty, which is a peculiar name that is basically an iPod shuffle, but for Spotify from what I've gathered.
Casey:
So, John, can you tell me a little more about this?
John:
Everybody sent us links to this thing, and then eventually The Verge picked it up too.
John:
So that's what we'll link in the show notes because we're talking about the place in the market for something like an iPod Shuffle.
John:
But this doesn't really qualify because, first of all, it's not $50.
John:
It's $85.
John:
Second, it does not have cell data access.
John:
It only has Wi-Fi and Bluetooth.
John:
So, you know, we're saying last show – was it the last show?
John:
Maybe the show before –
John:
that, you know, eventually you'll be able to make one of these for $50 that can just stream music.
John:
We're not there yet, but this one definitely looks like... It doesn't look like an iPod shuffle.
John:
It looks like a Fisher-Price version of an iPod shuffle.
John:
In fact, it's probably better.
John:
This is the thing I always annoyed about the shuffles, that it's so minimal, and you needed to, like, feel your hand on it to do, like, volume up or down or next previous track, right?
John:
You could find the middle button pretty well, but because it was a circle, trying to make sure that you're hitting...
John:
up on the circle instead of right or left which can be very bad if you're in the middle of a podcast especially before they got the software updated or if your track got rid wasn't marked as a podcast in itunes and it was just a song and you hit the button and just lose your place entirely uh you couldn't feel with your finger what is up and what is down this one's a little bit better because the center thing is a square so you could feel the flat edge anyway um
John:
It's just another coincidence of a product that is kind of like what we're talking about, but not really like it.
John:
So we'll come back in 10 years.
Casey:
All right, Marco, tell me about audio bit depth, because apparently we got that ever so slightly wrong.
Marco:
Well, I wouldn't say that.
Marco:
Oh, here we go.
Marco:
So last year we had some discussion about whether Apple should or ever will sell higher resolution music, you know, because like the audiophile world loves high bit rate, high sample rate music like 24, 192 and stuff like that.
Marco:
So Emea Matra writes in to say, well, I understand high resolution audio isn't for everybody.
Marco:
I was disappointed that you guys get the basic terminology wrong.
Marco:
Given the technical bias of your show and audience, a follow-up item addressing the difference between bit depth and bit rate would be appreciated.
Marco:
So basically, so bit rate is how many bits an encoding scheme is using, you know, usually per second to encode the total music.
Marco:
So
Marco:
In a lossy scheme, this basically... Like MP3, there would be like 128 kilobits per second.
Marco:
And that is just like the quality level of the music that you're getting.
Marco:
It's how many bits it will allocate to representing it.
Marco:
And usually the more bits you allocate to it, the higher quality you can achieve and the less you have to throw away.
Marco:
Bit depth...
Marco:
is basically talking about how precise the samples are you know everybody can kind of picture what a wave looks like and you know that's how sound waves come in and are represented in the uncompressed form this actually doesn't apply to things like mp3 quite the same way because the way the sound is represented is different but basically when you're looking at just a pure waveform and the way that's represented in like a lossless file or a wave or a
Marco:
or AIFF, every sample of audio, so you have a sample rate of 44,100 samples per second or whatever else represented as hertz, every one of those samples, it's representing the amplitude of that wave as a number.
Marco:
And the bit depth is the precision of those numbers.
Marco:
So if it's 16-bit like CDs, then that is represented by a 16-bit signed integer.
Marco:
If it's 24-bit, you have more bits.
Marco:
If it's usually, I think a 24, or I think beyond 24, I think it's always float.
Marco:
And you have floating point representations.
Marco:
And the reason these matter is that as you're encoding the music to these samples, you have to fit a number, the value that you're getting from the analog or whatever, you have to fit the value of that into this many bits of a number per sample.
Marco:
And so there's a certain degree of rounding that happens and a certain degree of error that's introduced as part of that rounding.
Marco:
If you only have 16 bits, then that kind of limits your resolution of how precise of a number you can represent there.
Marco:
And so there's all sorts of complicated things that go on in DAX and ADCs about basically how you round the numbers in such a way to minimize the error or to hide the error in different noise patterns and everything else.
Marco:
As you increase the error rate, you increase the noise floor.
Marco:
So you reduce the signal-to-noise ratio.
Marco:
That's the difference between the loudest sound you can hear and the quietest sound that can be represented below the noise floor.
Marco:
So you basically increase the hiss level at the very bottom of the track.
Marco:
The reason why audiophiles freak out about this is because when you go from 16-bit to 24-bit, which is where they usually go, the noise floor does drop considerably.
Marco:
There's a great Wikipedia article titled Audio Bit Depth.
Marco:
You should check it out.
Marco:
Basically, the noise floor at 24 bits for bit depth is 144 decibels, and at 16 bits, the regular CD standard, is only 96.
Marco:
So that's a pretty big difference.
Marco:
However...
Marco:
The reason this doesn't really matter for the most part is that 96 decibels of signal-to-noise ratio covers the human audible hearing range pretty well.
Marco:
The actual human audible hearing range is something like 120 decibels.
Marco:
It varies per person a little bit, but it's around 120 decibels.
Marco:
So it actually isn't representing the entire human audible hearing range.
Marco:
But it's – like you don't want to turn your speakers up so loud that you're actually damaging your eardrums.
Marco:
Like the human hearing range can go much higher in volume than what you actually should ever be listening to on a sustained basis.
Marco:
Like that's like a rock concert or a jet airplane flying overhead or things like that.
Marco:
It's –
Marco:
If you listen at any reasonable length to something that loud, you're going to damage your hearing pretty quickly, permanently.
Marco:
So 96 decibels of signal-to-noise ratio, which is what you get from CD quality 16-bit audio, is good enough upon listening.
Marco:
Where it matters is if you are editing.
Marco:
If you're recording, like I record my end of the show as 24-bit.
Marco:
I record audio 24-bit whenever I can or as float even whenever I can, which is 32-bit usually.
Marco:
Because when you're editing, you're changing the numbers.
Marco:
You're processing the audio.
Marco:
And so if you have rounding error over time, that could add up.
Marco:
After you apply a certain number of filters or adjustments or anything like that, and then that 96 decibels of noise floor that was in the original signal, once you process it a few times and you're rounding off the numbers a few more times, you might actually have more error in the signal than that, and the noise floor might start to become audible.
Marco:
So where higher bitrate audio makes sense is in mastering and editing and recording.
Marco:
But the final shipped version that you release to the public, or the version that you, the listener, are listening to, doesn't need to be more than 16-bit for almost any reason whatsoever.
Casey:
All right.
Marco:
Sorry.
Casey:
Well, that solves that.
Casey:
It's as though, Marco, that you really care about audio.
Casey:
I don't understand where this comes from.
Marco:
If you want, also, there's a wonderful video that explains a lot of this.
Marco:
There's a guy, Monty, I think his full name is Chris Montgomery.
Marco:
He is either the guy or one of the people who invented the AugVorbis audio codec.
Marco:
And he has a lot of great explainers out there about basically why you don't need higher-than-CD quality audio as a listener.
Marco:
And explains a lot of the stuff that I learned a lot from that and some other research.
Marco:
But we'll put both these links in the show notes, both that video and the Wikipedia article on audio bit depth.
Casey:
Excellent.
Casey:
So we had a couple of thoughts or listeners had a couple of thoughts about the iPhone Pro notch.
Casey:
And I'm embarrassed to admit that there is one thought that I didn't consider.
Casey:
So I'm in the camp that I think, not having seen anything, of course, that it makes the most sense to kind of hide the notch.
Casey:
So hypothetically, the area adjacent to the notch would be all black.
Casey:
So it would all kind of blend together and it would just look like empty screen in the center.
Casey:
And it would look not too dissimilar from the way a phone looks today.
Casey:
But somebody, maybe it was one of you guys, thought, well, okay, smart guy, what happens when you go landscape?
Casey:
And I don't have a good answer for that.
Casey:
So I'm really ashamed at myself that I didn't even think about this until I saw this in the show notes.
Casey:
So Marco, what do you think about what happens when you put this supposed phone in landscape?
Marco:
So obviously it depends on how they handle the notch in the UI.
Marco:
If the notch is basically hidden and you just have status bar black on left and right and then you have a square window below it that takes up the rest of the screen, which as I mentioned previously, that's what I kind of hope they do.
Marco:
If that's what they do, then I think it's pretty easy.
Marco:
In landscape, you just leave those little strips black and you don't use them at all.
Marco:
um that's probably not what they will do i have a feeling what they actually will do is you know shove translucent ui under those and and have ways to actually you know use it in in a way that might be kind of awkward now in landscape the only reason i think anybody used their phones in landscape uh i i think probably the big ones are watching video although even that a lot of people watch it in portrait anyway just because they're they that's how they are used to holding their phones
Marco:
Also, certain games play in landscape.
Marco:
Although, again, I think the most successful ones play in portrait on the phone.
Marco:
And then the other thing is, I guess, when you're taking video or shooting with the camera, you might rotate it.
Marco:
So all those things, they could make ways to use the notch in a few clever ways.
Marco:
Like maybe a game could shove some controls in there.
Marco:
Maybe the camera could shove some controls in there.
John:
but i have a feeling most of what we're going to see is basically going to be in landscape the notch just becomes black and you don't see it at all yeah i think you can't you can't do anything with the notch in landscape because anything that you would think of doing would represent data loss to the content in in portrait the status bar is not your content it's part of the ui so you can do whatever dance you want to do with the status bar whether it you know hides in there or the status bar is below or whatever but
John:
uh if you're in landscape and you're doing video or something even if the os lets you go edge to edge and use the notches what if you want to see what's under the camera things it's like something's in my way i can't i can't see what the camera's shooting there i know maybe that's not important uh what was there was something that i was angry about oh uh i think it was like quick time player
John:
Many years ago, maybe still now.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I still use QuickTime Player 7.
John:
But at one point, Apple, I believe Apple, released a video player.
John:
I think it was the QuickTime player that would show video in a window with rounded corners.
John:
And it was like, what's...
John:
don't chop off the corners like there's video in those corners why not that there's a lot of video but there is video there and you're like no you don't need to see that because it's more important for this window to have rounded corners than for you to see the video that's in that corner and i know it's just a small thing but just on the principle it's like
John:
if you do that i don't even have the option to see what's under the notch right so i think you have to just when you go into landscape uh the i feel like the os should just enforce entirely maybe games can come up with something clever to do like little men climb on the notch right or the notches like a little gun turd or something but beyond that that'd be awesome i mean yeah because you can incorporate it and be fun but it would only work on this one model of phone
John:
It's just so much safer to say when it goes in landscape.
John:
Forget about the notch.
John:
We don't light up the pixels on either side of it.
John:
The thing is just, you know, it's just a straight line down the edge.
John:
I also saw, by the way, another mock-up image a while ago showing screen real estate-wise, what do you get with the edge-to-edge phone?
John:
And I know this can't be true because this one's got to be wider than the iPhone 7 too, but it was like...
John:
it was basically trying to say you don't really get any new space because all the new pixels on the bottom are taken up ostensibly with the home button area and whatever they're going to do there and this thing was assuming that like the ui nav bar wasn't gonna throw stuff there and on the top you've got the notch uh and then you got a little sliver of space and then you've got the normal iphone size screen in between those two things and a little sliver of space was like
John:
look like a little status bar so the idea was that i guess if you had a non-optimized for iphone pro application it would show its status bar below the notch in the traditional way because between the bottom of the notch and the top of the software home button area would would be a screen that is the same resolution as some existing iphone anyway that's that's the impression i got from this image but the more i think about it the more i think that can't possibly be the case because at the very least it should be wider than the other stuff but um
John:
it would be weird if there was like a backward compatibility mode for unmodified apps that were not like notch savvy you know what i mean like they could they you know and you would think that apple wouldn't do that it's inelegant they took they you know phone apps run at 2x on your ipad to this day and it looks terrible and they zoom uh things that have not been updated for the iphone 5 for like they in the past they've done that but
John:
And it's been a good choice because, like, if people don't update their apps, we'll make them run as close as possible to the way they used to run.
John:
So the app has no idea that it's running on a totally new, weird phone.
John:
It just looks a little bit strange, but it's completely compatible because we don't do anything weird.
John:
And I can imagine that happening with this new phone, which will be bad, but I guess will motivate people to...
John:
incorporate the notch into their applications fair enough now why bother having the notch in the first place again this is one of my thoughts uh why why are we why are we doing this what why do we have a notch like the edge to edge screen all right yeah we want to have an edge screen but why do we have to have a notch of that you can go
John:
all the way to the left edge all the way to the right edge and all the way to the bottom edge all you had to do is not go all the way to the top edge instead of having a notch you have a presumably very thin little forehead it would still be a quote-unquote edge-to-edge screen as compared to all iPhones previously which had very large chins and foreheads right and
John:
The notch is asymmetrical, and so would the skinny little forehead version.
Casey:
But it's less asymmetrical, John, the notch, I mean.
John:
Well, but the whole point is there's something on the top that's not on the bottom, whether it's a skinny thing that's on the top.
John:
Anyway, and it would just eliminate an entire class of weird software problems.
John:
So presumably Apple has done a lot of work in the OS and in the frameworks that
John:
figuring out the answers to all these questions that we're just guessing at now right they've done they've figured out answers to all of these they've decided what they're gonna do in all these different cases tested applications test the new apis so you can be notch savvy and do all this stuff right all that work would go away if they just made that notch go from edge to edge but i guess the phone wouldn't look as cool and then you know i don't know like does anyone else have a notch is apple going to be the first notch one i know there are phones out there that already look like edge to edge screen both a little skinny forehead so maybe apple just didn't want to look like that
John:
can't innovate anymore my ass this would be one of those things where uh if apple were it was like other companies and like you could they have like interviews with the designers like you get the whole team that designed the new iphone and they'd have to do a big article and like wired or something and be like tell me about your motivation for design and they would like explain why they went with the notch right but we never get those reasons just like this is the phone here it is maybe there's a
John:
which Apple will never, ever elaborate on.
John:
And like, so we just, you know, we just had to wait 20 years for the tell all books, but it's a bit of a head scratcher for me because I think it looks cool with the notch.
John:
I think there's going to be some interesting possibilities there, but it is a heck of a lot of work.
John:
And it seems like a, a stop gap.
John:
Like, are we going to have not just forever?
John:
Presumably whatever tech issues necessitate the notch, uh,
John:
will diminish over time either you're able to embed those sensors someplace else or you'll be able to make such a skinny forehead that it won't even be a forehead it'll just be like the thing goes to edge to edge or i don't know that this is not the permanent state of all like will all future iphones have notches for the next seven years there's going to be notches from here to there because they're doing again doing all this work with the os and everything it seemed like a waste if it's just like remember that time we rejiggered all the the frameworks in the os for this one phone
John:
And it was the only one that ended up having a notch.
John:
I don't know.
John:
We'll find out in the fall, I guess.
Marco:
Yeah, this is why what I want to happen, although I don't think this is what will happen again.
Marco:
But what I want to happen here is I want the notch to basically be invisible in the software.
Marco:
Like I want it to just have a status bar on left and right.
Marco:
then you get the extra 20-point height that the status bar would have taken up in the main screen.
Marco:
You can shove that up into this little side area where there is no center, but you can rearrange the status bar, and then the application frame is just everything below that.
Marco:
I would love that that was a solution.
Marco:
I don't want, as a user and as a programmer of apps for this thing, and as a designer of the app, I do not want to have to deal with the notch.
Marco:
I think it will be clunky and weird, and I think it will look weird as a user.
Marco:
I'm not looking forward to that at all, and I do think it looks like,
Marco:
an inelegant hack and if samsung would have released that notch and apple didn't we'd make fun of them for it that's exactly the kind of thing we'd be like oh you guys are bad at design look at this stupid notch just like the you know like the flat tire moto 360 watch like we made fun of that relentlessly everyone in apple world did um because that was a that was like a bad design hack to get around a physical shortcoming
Marco:
I don't see how the notch is any different.
Marco:
That looks like a bad design hack to get around a physical shortcoming to me.
Marco:
Again, we'll see what happens when we see the final software, but I really do not want the UI in any way to wrap around that except the status bar in a way that you barely even notice.
Marco:
But because of that leaked image from the HomeBot firmware showing that notch as the recognizable, iconic shape of this phone, that's the reason I'm concerned that they're not doing it that way.
John:
That would just be the lock screen, like you said.
Marco:
Yeah, maybe just the lock screen.
Marco:
That wouldn't be too bad.
Marco:
But if it's any other parts of the UI, like if they scroll translucent bars under there or anything like that, I really don't think I'm going to like that.
Marco:
Again, that seems like a bad design hack, not good design.
John:
So people in chat remarked posting pictures of, of course, Android phones that have their own little notches.
John:
The one they're showing here is a very tiny notch.
John:
It just wraps around one little front-facing camera because obviously the
John:
You know, why does the new phone supposedly have a notch instead of just this little tiny button-like cutout?
John:
Because it's got to have more than just a camera there.
John:
Maybe it'll have two front-facing cameras.
John:
Certainly it's got the IR sensor for depth of the face stuff.
John:
Like, who knows what's in that notch?
John:
But it can't be as small as this.
John:
But anyway, as in all things, Android phones have done it first.
Casey:
I think actually Simpsons did it first, John.
Casey:
Then opera.
Casey:
Then opera.
John:
Simpsons did it is the line.
John:
Opera did it first is that joke.
John:
So I think opera wins this one.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Did you really just well actually me?
John:
You sure did.
Marco:
The sad part is he's right.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Eero.
Marco:
Go to Eero.com and use code ATP for free overnight shipping.
Marco:
Wi-Fi, when you only have one router, just doesn't cover houses very well.
Marco:
Because Wi-Fi waves don't go through walls as well as they go through open spaces, and you get these dead zones and everything else.
Marco:
Eero is designed to solve that problem because businesses and schools and campuses have done this for a long time.
Marco:
They use multiple access points.
Marco:
And if you did this for your home, it was very, very complicated before Eero.
Marco:
Eero makes it incredibly easy to have a distributed Wi-Fi system, enterprise-grade Wi-Fi, in your home with the easiest setup of any system I've ever seen.
Marco:
All you do, you plug it in, you use their app on your iPhone or your Android phone, and it sets it up, and you have to do literally almost nothing.
Marco:
So you get the one main unit, and they've actually just updated their hardware.
Marco:
The old ones are great, too, but they just did the Generation 2 system.
Marco:
So this has the main unit, which is now tri-band and twice as fast as the first one, has a whole other radio.
Marco:
You have now these secondary units.
Marco:
They used to be the same as the main unit.
Marco:
Now they have these little ones called beacons.
Marco:
and they are even smaller even simpler they look like kind of just slightly larger than a nightlight and you just plug it in it sits flush in your outlet it looks amazing it's tiny it's unobtrusive they even actually have nightlights in the bottom of the beacons which is pretty cool so if you put it like in a hallway or anything and it makes it so easy to place anywhere and that covers the whole house and they don't have to be wired to each other only the first one has to be wired to your home's internet connection and the other ones you just they distribute the wi-fi with a mesh network between themselves
Marco:
So you don't have to worry about running Ethernet wires to your access points or anything else.
Marco:
It's super, super easy.
Marco:
With the new second generation and the Eero beacon, performance is even better and the looks are even nicer and it's even smaller.
Marco:
What you need is this kind of system.
Marco:
Single routers are not good enough anymore.
Marco:
They don't cover houses.
Marco:
We all know that.
Marco:
We've all done that for years.
Marco:
No matter how many antennas you put on one, it doesn't cover everything.
Marco:
And Eero is by far the easiest way to do this I've ever seen.
Marco:
So check it out.
Marco:
They have great support if you need it.
Marco:
They have great pricing.
Marco:
Go to Eero.com and use promo code ATP to get free overnight shipping.
Marco:
Thanks to Eero for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Anyway, Rustam Karamov of 1Password, I believe a co-founder if I'm not mistaken, has written a blog post to say, among other things, 1Password 7 for Windows will be getting support for standalone vaults, which is the thing that started the big kerfuffle a few weeks ago.
Casey:
Also, WLAN Sync and different license-related information.
Casey:
John, any other thoughts you want to add on this?
John:
No, just that this is another in the pattern we've seen for a couple of years now that, like, a...
John:
company will change some part of its product either the features or the business model or both and then a bunch of people get angry about it and then there's always it's always the follow-up where like they've incorporated the feedback from their customers like they you know they were taken by surprise by how uh you know angry people were about a particular thing and they all right well we can change that you want you know to reassure people that like we're not gonna you know the subscription thing is not going to take away your ability to have all your stuff locally you don't have to use the cloud so on and so forth so looks like they are doing the right things
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I saw a lot of feedback about this.
Casey:
A lot of people talked about, well, if everything goes subscription, then I'm not going to have any money for anything anymore.
Casey:
And I don't know.
Casey:
I feel like we should address that perhaps again.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
Did we talk about this before?
John:
Marco covered it the last time we talked about it.
John:
I agree.
John:
It's fresh in my memory because I listened to those shows just recently to catch up on them.
John:
But yeah, it's kind of a slippery slope argument, but so far it hasn't happened.
John:
And there's a natural counterbalance, which is, well, if people don't like it, they won't buy it.
John:
And if they don't buy it, people won't do it.
John:
So it's...
John:
There aren't many forces in the mix here that are going to cause this dystopia to happen despite the fact that users don't want it.
John:
Like it's possible for there to be countervailing forces, for example, if Apple said, hey, guess what?
John:
The only way you could sell applications in the app course is to subscription.
John:
But that that's not the way things are.
John:
So it's not not time to be worried about it now.
John:
Don't like it.
John:
Don't buy it.
Casey:
Exactly, exactly what I was going to say.
Casey:
If something that you like but don't love suddenly becomes subscription, then guess what?
Casey:
You have an option, which is not to get a subscription.
Casey:
That's okay.
Casey:
The one thing I will say, though, is that if an app goes from not subscription to subscription, there's no way around that that's going to happen from time to time.
Casey:
And that is tough, right?
Casey:
Because here it is, you thought you paid for something in some cases that...
Casey:
That's a bummer.
John:
Well, you know, that's the model.
John:
If I lose my job, I don't want to lose cable TV because I can't afford the bill anymore.
John:
Well, you know, it's like, well, I need the software to do my job.
John:
Like, presumably every single application in an entire category won't be subscription, right?
John:
Or even if it is, maybe they'll have varying subscriptions.
John:
And right now, the subscriptions are like $3 a month.
John:
So I feel like if you can't script together $3 a month, you have much bigger problems than not being able to use your graphics program to produce spec work, which you shouldn't be doing anyway to get your next job.
John:
So anyway, you know.
John:
in times of hardship many things are difficult uh from paying your rent to your food your health insurance uh your software licenses are just another one of those potential things that could be a problem but you know if there's a need for this and if this is a real problem someone will fill it by selling a program for a fixed price uh and you know
John:
selling upgrades in the traditional way or going out of business because they can't sustain their one application.
John:
But hey, you've got it until it stops working.
Marco:
I mean, there's always options to like, you know, look at what like high school kids and college kids and people in developing countries like there's a lot of markets of people who can't afford a bunch of software licenses or subscriptions and they find other options.
Marco:
Piracy maybe is not the best option, but it's certainly a widespread one.
Marco:
A much better option is free software alternatives.
Marco:
Almost every kind of task you can do in a computer today has some kind of free software alternative to the big name one.
Marco:
Photoshop, Illustrator, audio processing, almost all these big creative apps or productivity apps, they almost all have freeware alternatives, free open source, if not just free alternatives.
Marco:
Not to mention all the stuff built into the OSs these days or doing things on iOS and Android where the apps cost very, very little money usually and usually you buy it once, if anything, and it's free and you can do a lot of free stuff there or do a lot of inexpensive stuff there with tools that are really good these days.
Marco:
There's lots of options now.
Marco:
I think the I can't afford all my software subscriptions thing is...
Marco:
mostly a complaint from people who very much can afford them uh and are just looking for a reason to be upset about a pricing change because when you change the business model that's when people get upset it matters a lot less what you change it to than the fact that you changed it and people feel maybe surprised or caught off guard by that or feel like they're being taken advantage of like after the fact you're changing the deal you know after the fact you know i know pray you don't answer it further etc i
Marco:
Again, I don't think this is a real issue.
Marco:
I don't think this is something that anybody is actually facing hardship over in any real numbers.
Marco:
This is people complaining who very much can't afford it and are just mad.
Marco:
And for the people who truly can't afford it, there's lots of great options out there that are either inexpensive or free.
Marco:
And many of them are built into the OS you already have.
Marco:
And whatever isn't, you can get in your app store of choice or your online repository of software of choice for very little money or nothing usually.
Marco:
Because this is not like people have used computers without paying for things on them for a very long time.
Marco:
This is a solved problem in so many ways.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Jaro wants to know, is there any reason not to use the built-in calibration tools on the Apple TV?
Casey:
You can get to that from the Apple TV settings, audio and video calibrate.
John:
You can use them, but they're terrible.
John:
I mean, they're not terrible.
John:
They're limited.
John:
I think all it does is screen bounds and maybe one other thing.
John:
It doesn't do all the color, white balance, grayscale, brightness, contrast.
John:
It doesn't do all that stuff.
John:
If they want to improve that in the future versions of you also would be great.
John:
But the current one and I believe the one in the betas is still just very limited.
John:
It's better than nothing.
John:
So by all means, do it.
John:
And so you can see if you're in a Casey like situation where you're missing half the pixels on your screen because not half, but some portion of the pixels on your screen because you have your thing in overscan mode.
John:
And that may make you sad to know that.
John:
But beyond that, you still need a calibration app.
Casey:
Fine, fine.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Apparently, Samir Mizrahi listens to our show, or at least that's what I'm going to claim.
Casey:
Because mere weeks, maybe even a few days after we had discussed how frustrating it is to hear the first song in your library every time you reconnect via Bluetooth...
Casey:
Uh, this, this individual has released a single on iTunes called a, a, a, a, a, very good song.
Casey:
And it is, it's a little less than 10 minutes of silence because apparently any more than 10 minutes and iTunes charges you for a whole album.
Casey:
And the idea is because it's a space, a space, a space, a space, a space, a space, very good song.
Casey:
It is very likely to be the very first song in your, in your library.
Casey:
So, uh,
Casey:
Every time you plug in your phone or start Bluetooth or what have you, you don't hear the same, in my case, track by Aaliyah every single time.
Casey:
So this is an absolutely brilliant solution to a problem that none of us should really have.
Marco:
My favorite thing about this is how far up the charts it was climbing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
We saw some articles about it here and there.
Marco:
I don't have anything handy, unfortunately, because I'm a slacker on vacation.
Marco:
But it was noticeably ranking on the iTunes top singles chart somewhere.
John:
You're not allowed to start with a space or a punctuation character or a number or all the other things that would have sorted before the A's?
John:
Because I feel like now you've started a war now for who can be the earliest track, right?
John:
No, don't get that AA track.
John:
You need my track, which is 111.
John:
Oh, don't get mine.
John:
It's space, space, space, exclamation point.
John:
uh anyway um well i feel like that's kind of like a like a million dollar home page problem like it anybody else who tries the same thing is is not going to get anywhere yeah i i i'm just saying for for sorting purposes not for like actually selling the thing um but you know everyone sent us this obviously but it doesn't solve the problem at all in fact i think it makes it worse the fact that it's silent makes it worse because i if if i had this track i would be like
John:
um waiting and thinking am i hearing the silent track or is it just taking a long time to start playing like is it launching overcast in the background and like you know the the problem is not i keep hearing the first you know few notes of a song uh because alphabet the alphabetically first song in my playlist i like it's a good song and i'm not sick of it because i never listened to the whole thing i frustrated by the fact that it has picked the wrong source and by the way
John:
after i said like oh most of the time that's the right thing maybe 15 of the time i get the wrong thing uh this thing has taken revenge on me and my last like 50 trips in the car 100 of the time it started playing music even if i was just playing i don't know if it's the overcast beta is crashing or i don't know what the hell's going on but anyway it's really bad for me but wait there is no current beta you should be using the app store version
John:
Well, maybe that's the problem.
John:
Do I have a little dot next to Overcast on my phone?
John:
Let me see.
John:
That's a bug dot right now.
John:
I do have a dot next to Overcast.
John:
Ah, get rid of that.
John:
All right.
John:
Anyway, maybe that's my problem.
John:
But either way, this track would not solve my problem.
John:
I mean, what it should really be is a voice that says, it happened again.
John:
You thought different audio would be playing, but instead it's playing the song from your playlist.
John:
Pull over safely and then fiddle with your phone.
John:
Don't try to do it while you're driving because you'll run somebody over or you'll die.
Marco:
uh but you then you'd be sick of hearing that bottom line is there is no safe track to put there and i don't think the silent one solves a problem i think it makes it worse but more power to this person for selling people the sounds of silence all right a i don't know how to sell music on itunes but can we cut that out and actually try this and then b the way to solve this i know we have some listeners inside of apple i don't know how high up they go
Marco:
But the way to solve this is to somehow get a hold of Johnny Ives or Tim Cook's iPhone and sync a single track to it that is a renamed version of some very annoying song that is renamed to be like A-A-A-A.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
The possibilities are endless of what song this could be.
Casey:
I get knocked out.
Marco:
You know, something that would really drive the most, this problem will get solved in the next version of iOS.
John:
Phil's car will just be, can't innovate more of my ass on a loop.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
So we actually did get some feedback about this.
Casey:
And this individual wrote to say, Bluetooth has two major ways to start playback in a car, the good old simple play command and a newer set of advanced browsing commands that allows the car to control the apps and navigate the media library on the phone.
Casey:
With a play command, the active media player is chosen by the phone and that from time to time gets a little buggy.
Casey:
According to this person, it is quite likely that this whole little subsystem was written by one person who may have then been moved somewhere else within Apple and who even knows.
Casey:
But with the new browsing stuff, then the car can decide how it wants to select, you know, like the active media player and a playlist and an album and blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
And so now you're letting the car make choices that it probably shouldn't be making.
Casey:
And so that makes everything a little bit dodgy.
Casey:
So this is surely in part Apple's fault, but it is not by necessity entirely Apple's fault, depending on the car, depending on how it's connecting, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
.
Marco:
We're sponsored this week by Aftershocks bone conduction headphones.
Marco:
Go to atp.aftershocks.com to learn more.
Marco:
Aftershocks headphones work by bone conduction.
Marco:
So these small transducers rest in front of your ears, not inside or around them like most headphones.
Marco:
And they send many vibrations through your cheekbones directly to your inner ear.
Marco:
It totally bypasses your ears and your eardrums.
Marco:
So unlike every other kind of headphone, bone conduction leaves your ears completely open with nothing in them.
Marco:
So for a lot of people like me, we can't wear earbuds or in-ear monitors because they get physically uncomfortable in our ear canals.
Marco:
Aftershocks don't have this problem because nothing is sitting in your ear.
Marco:
And because they don't cover your ear, I find them far less sweaty than regular headphones in the summertime.
Marco:
And they're even IP55 certified for water resistance.
Marco:
So you can run with them in the rain or you can just sweat all over them all gross and it's totally fine.
Marco:
I have found that I use these more than any other headphones in the summertime.
Marco:
In fact, I'm on vacation right now for a few weeks and I brought only these headphones for walking.
Marco:
All other portable headphones I've left at home because I only want to use these here because I'm walking a lot.
Marco:
I'm using these multiple hours a day.
Marco:
I'm sweating a lot.
Marco:
I'm sometimes using them in the rain, and it's totally fine.
Marco:
And the great thing about it is that because nothing blocks your ears at all, you hear the whole world around you.
Marco:
So you can be walking or maybe cycling or running where you really want to hear the world around you for safety reasons or just to enjoy it, and you need something that doesn't block your ear, and that's what bone conduction is great at.
Marco:
It's also great if you want to listen around the house.
Marco:
If you want to take a phone call, because these are obviously Bluetooth, they can do phone calls.
Marco:
If you want to take a phone call with them and maybe you want to hear if anything happens in your house in the process, you can do that too.
Marco:
And so if I'm honest, the downsides here are they're not the best for sound quality and they don't get very loud.
Marco:
If you're in a very loud environment, because they're so open to the world...
Marco:
If you're in like a subway station, these wouldn't be the pick for you.
Marco:
But they're amazing for walking around outside, for any kind of exercise use, for around the house.
Marco:
And anything you want to hear the world around you, that's where the aftershocks are great.
Marco:
And again, they're so awesome for minimizing sweatiness too.
Marco:
So the Aftershocks Trex Titanium that I use here retails for $130.
Marco:
Listeners can get a pair for yourself for just $100, $99.95, by visiting atp.aftershocks.com.
Marco:
That is atp.aftershocks.com.
Marco:
Thanks to Aftershocks for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
uh apparently ask atp is really a thing uh you were john i think you had said you wanted it to be a thing and marco you might have said the same all right and apparently it's a thing well the question is where does it go does it go after follow-up or does it go after topics or does it go in the after show where does it go no i think it goes after follow-up yeah this sounds good that's i think that was right
John:
You always don't want to keep us away from our topics.
John:
If we have long-ass ATP, we're even less likely to get to topics.
Casey:
You know what we could do, John?
Casey:
Stick with me here.
Casey:
I know this is wild.
Casey:
But we could have a little bit less follow-up.
John:
We just did.
John:
We just did do that.
Casey:
Are you sure?
Casey:
We've been recording 45 minutes.
John:
I didn't add an item about talking about bit depth for 20 minutes.
John:
That was Margo.
John:
That wasn't 20 minutes.
Casey:
Anyway, Kane asks, how do you guys sync your home directories between your Macs?
Casey:
And I will go first.
Casey:
I don't.
Casey:
I use Dropbox for a handful of things, but generally speaking, it's all in the cloud, man.
Casey:
So who cares?
John:
Same.
John:
Yeah, I don't sync my home directories.
John:
That's not a thing.
John:
I mean, I doubt many people do that.
John:
I think there used to be a way to... No, I'm thinking of the server thing.
John:
Never mind.
John:
Anyway, what people do is they just use cloud stuff, whether it's iCloud Drive or Dropbox, and that's the stuff that syncs, but they don't sync their entire home directories.
John:
And it probably wouldn't be a good idea to sync your entire home directories because probably in the library directory and your home directory, there's crap that is machine-specific somewhere lurking in there.
John:
So you probably don't want to do a naive...
John:
full sync of your entire home directory and in general sync is really hard to get right and don't try to set up something yourself to do it because you'll just end up hosing yourself and you'll be sad
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
This is a truly great question, which outside of the obvious, I don't have a really good answer to.
Casey:
So the question is from, let me get a full name if I can, Peter Cam.
Casey:
Peter Cam asks, what's one piece of old tech that is still in use, not hidden in an attic?
Casey:
And I think he's really talking to you, John.
Casey:
Due to superior qualities or retro joy.
Casey:
So, for example, CRT TV, old video game consoles, iPods, etc.
Casey:
I will start again.
Casey:
The obvious answer to this is that I have a turntable that I still use almost daily.
Casey:
However, I just received that turntable as a Christmas present and it was brand new at the time.
Casey:
So, it is old technology.
Casey:
However, it is a new device.
Casey:
In terms of old technology that's still in use, I...
Casey:
I can't think of anything offhand.
Casey:
I'm sure there's something.
Casey:
I'm not debating that I have something barbaric and old that I still use, but darned if I can think of what it would be.
Casey:
So Marco went first last time.
Casey:
John, anything old that's outside of your attic?
John:
I was going to say my plasma TV, but it's not superior quality anymore.
John:
It's not retro joy.
John:
So I guess that's probably just an example of something old.
John:
My consoles are probably it.
John:
I have a bunch of old consoles hooked up.
John:
Journey on PS4 helps me not have to use my PS3 for that.
John:
But if I want to play Ego or Shadow of the Colossus, I still have to use the PS3.
John:
So it is still connected to my TV.
John:
There's going to be a PS4 port.
John:
of shadow of the colossus leaving only eco like my ps3 is hanging on um same thing with my wii which is basically used to play gamecube games most of the time almost all my old consoles are still hooked up it's kind of going to be a shame when i eventually get a 4k tv because i doubt the 4k tv will have
John:
uh component video input to which i can connect my gamecube so i'd have to buy some kind of adapter and then i'd probably go and don't even bother right same thing with the wii i have wii's got component video going into my tv um i would have to buy an adapter for that as well uh but for now yeah i got a lot of old consoles hooked up
Casey:
You know, I should point out that Marco is probably going to say the same thing I forgot about, which is I do have a mechanical watch that is also not terribly old, but I do like using it when I'm dressing up for something special.
Casey:
So now that I've stolen your thunder, Marco, what about you?
Marco:
Honestly, that was what I was thinking of as the best thing I could say here.
Marco:
Most of the things that I use that are actually, quote, old in tech terms are not old enough to be interesting.
Marco:
So I'll have an old speaker amp for my desk or something, but that's an old desktop computer speaker amp being six years old.
Marco:
For a while, I was using my first Fujitsu ScanSnap scanner, which I got about nine years ago, but I actually replaced that about last year because I was tired of replacing the rollers and the new ones were super fast, and so I just got a new one.
Marco:
um yeah for me i think the best answer here is mechanical watches um it's it's not a very interesting answer and it's not a new answer for people who have heard me talk ever um so that's why i kind of wanted i wanted to go with something better uh but i was not able to um i do have mechanical watches that are somewhat old um my oldest one is from 1968 so that's fairly old um so i guess that counts
Casey:
Awesome.
Casey:
And that's the end of Ask ATP for this week.
Casey:
So let's move on to some topics.
Casey:
John, are you really going to let me get away with this?
John:
It's so fast.
John:
It's a really quick one.
John:
It's a really quick one.
John:
That's another question.
John:
How many questions do we do?
John:
I just did three because that's how many I could put before I ran out of time before the show.
Casey:
So Chris Johnson, thank you, Chris, writes in, blah, blah, Destiny 2, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Try again.
Casey:
Which Destiny 2 class and subclass will you start with?
Marco:
Marco, you want to take that?
Marco:
How about NSObject?
Marco:
And let's see, subclass would be, how about NSMutableSet?
Marco:
I like that one a lot.
Marco:
You need to get on with the Swift Foundation classes here.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah, they dropped the NS prefix a while ago, man.
John:
Come on.
John:
So I'm going to do, I was a Warlock main in Destiny 1.
John:
I barely, I had a Titan that my son played and a Hunter that I barely played.
John:
I did level the Titan and Hunter up, so they will be ported over to Destiny 2 along with my Warlock, but I'm going to be Warlock main in Destiny 2, and I'm probably going to start with Dawnblade because it's the new one.
John:
Was any of that English?
John:
Because it didn't sound like it.
John:
People know.
John:
First episode of Ask ATP, a rousing success.
John:
No one else remembered about the thing and I had to rush to get the things in there in between trying to get my kids and my dog settled down before the show.
John:
Feel free to, I'm pulling from that same sheet, feel free to pull your own questions in there and throw them in the little section.
Casey:
You know, the right answer, which will never work, but the rightest answer is for each of us to pull our favorite question each week.
Casey:
But I guarantee Marco will forget and or not care.
Casey:
And I give myself one chance in three of actually remembering.
John:
Well, in the absence of anybody else, I will pull questions and throw them in there.
John:
But, you know.
John:
We wouldn't have the section at all if I hadn't remembered it.
Casey:
So it's true.
Casey:
Where would we be without you, John?
Casey:
And speaking of, John, tell us about this kerfuffle with Google and this diversity memo, which I'm not sure is even the right way to describe it.
John:
yeah this is old kind of old news by now but we haven't recorded in a long time and they're in the world of uh politics and discrimination there is newer news but it is uh not really tech related but this certainly is tech related uh it's a story that everybody probably knows by now a google employee wrote i don't know why they call it a memo i guess it's the old parlance wrote a big thing
John:
sort of talking to google internally uh saying we're all googlers here uh here's what i think about what the company's doing and here's my opinion on it so on and so forth and it caused a big stink um we will put a link to the document in the show notes on the off chance that you haven't already read it it's not that long if you're like oh it's 10 pages in the grand scheme of things it's not that long uh because we don't have pages in the web you just scroll um
John:
and also what we'll have in the show notes are what i think are some of the best responses to the google thing uh so anyway the getting back to the story here being uh chief summer hours in chief and in lieu of casey doing this um uh the upshot is that the person who wrote this was fired uh because it contained i forget what the phrasing was but it contained a bunch of uh
John:
ideas and opinions that are counter to the way google operates and then people are angry that the person got fired and people arguing on the internet about it and so on and so forth again uh this is a well-covered story and i feel like if you don't know what we're talking about or don't or have only read one or two things about it just read you know the five links that we put in there i feel like you will have covered the range of what people how people are reacting to it but on this show what i wanted to talk about
John:
you guys can feel free to take whatever angle you want on this thing, um, is the idea that people dismissed the memo that people like read it and were just didn't, didn't address it at all.
John:
Didn't take it seriously.
John:
They just dismissed it out of hand.
John:
And a lot of people were angry about that, that like,
John:
why won't you engage with this?
John:
Why won't you talk about the ideas?
John:
Lots of yelling about, like, someone said something bad about it, but you didn't even talk about any of the points that are in the memo.
John:
Like, why are you being so dismissive?
John:
And I understand where people are coming from with that, but I think there is an explanation, and it's a frustrating explanation, but it's something, you know, you encounter again and again.
John:
When I read that memo...
John:
Nothing in it was new because I'd seen every idea put forward in the memo many, many times before.
John:
Because there weren't any new ideas in there.
John:
Everything in there is something that someone else has said in a very similar form many, many, many, many, many times in the past.
John:
And if you...
John:
Enter any field, whatever it is, whether it's woodworking, programming, diversity, whatever it is, and you lay out all your opinions, but you are not an expert in the field.
John:
Especially if you say something controversial or you're addressing some point that is a point of contention, chances are very good that the people who have been arguing about this same topic and who have studied this topic and are just like are well-versed in this topic, chances are very good that they've heard everything you're going to say before and they've argued about it amongst themselves for years and years and years.
John:
And so when you come out with this thing and they roll their eyes and dismiss you...
John:
It's because to them, it's like the 900th time someone is saying the exact same things and they've already been discussed.
John:
But from the outside, it's like, well, how, why are you not addressing my points?
John:
I feel like I have important things to say here.
John:
And how can, like, it's, how can you just dismiss me?
John:
It's not a valid argument.
John:
Obviously, you know, maybe I'm right and you're just afraid to address my blah, blah, blah.
John:
This is going to happen.
John:
no matter what the topic is uh and i mean in some ways you have to recognize like where you are on the uh in the range of knowledge about this topic am i do i have a phd in this topic have i studied this topic for 50 years and well versed in all the literature and like or am i just somebody who thought about this for the past year or two and has some ideas like
John:
You're never, you know, and maybe you can say they shouldn't dismiss me.
John:
And what they should do is if someone is a novice and says something that's been said before, then please tell me point by laborious point.
John:
Bring me up to speed on the state of the art in this area of study.
John:
That's not a reasonable request because then it's like everybody who stumbles into a math forum and says, I just think I've, you know, what about this?
John:
And have you guys ever thought of that?
John:
They got to teach you all the math you need to know to get to the point where you realize the thing that you're saying has been discussed many times before and like either proven or disproven or hear the different, you know, like it's, that's not a valid position.
John:
I know a little bit about something and I have an opinion and here's this thing.
John:
And they're like, oh, well, we've seen people say that thing.
John:
a million times we've already discussed it amongst ourselves and we already know what everyone else in the field thinks about this we don't have time to bring you up to speed on this entire field of study and that feels like you're being dismissed and so i understand why people are angry the guy who wrote it's angry about being dismissed people who sympathize with what is in the thing are angry that
John:
that this thing is dismissed they feel like you know you know whatever it's being silenced no one's taking him seriously whatever now first of all that's like that that's an initial reaction but second all these links in the show notes show that that's not true that some some poor people went there and just went point by laborious point and tried mightily to explain and these aren't even experts in the field for the most part these are just people who happen to know a little bit more or have a little bit clearer uh you know
John:
train of thinking about this or really just even if they have no expertise in the field but have been around the block a few times and have argued on the internet a few times and say listen i don't even know anything about this subject but i can tell you memo writer that you have no idea what you're doing like you you know that even without knowing anything about this topic i can see that your points don't connect and you're doing a bad job arguing this and
John:
Again, if you argued on Usenet in the 90s, if you argued in person in, you know, college campuses in the 80s and 70s and 60s, like...
John:
You know the person who wrote this memo.
John:
You know their thinking.
John:
You know what they're saying.
John:
You recognize their enthusiasm and fervor.
John:
This is the thing about getting old.
John:
Everything slows down, and your hearing goes bad, and your eyes get worse, and just all sorts of bad things happen.
John:
But there's something to that wisdom thing.
John:
I mean, not wisdom.
John:
Maybe it's just experience.
John:
That's why in all sorts of sci-fi things, when there's some really old creature, they're always just like...
John:
it's like you've seen it all right um and i know that's like the worst thing it's like you know that that itself is a logical fallacy like a you know appeal to authority you should trust me because i know a lot about this topic but but it's not what it is it's more like just exhaustion like if pressed if the fate of the universe depended on it experts in the field could take this person into a room and over the course of the next 20 years educate them to the
John:
what is wrong with this memo, right?
John:
And I feel like that should be the goal of a lot of, you know, if you trust that this is the case, and I'm not just like blowing smoke beer, but that the goal should be like, if you read this memo and you think that there are some good solid points in there, your goal should be to...
John:
learn more about it until until you get on the same page with everyone else who sees this for what it is or learn so much about it that you actually reveal the real truth of it that nobody knows right but i can tell you this memo is not the real truth of it that nobody knows because this memo are the same tired ideas that have been discussed again and again and again by people in every single field related to this right um and that
John:
like again this this is the meta point and people like they don't want to hear it and there's no way to convince them of it and i'm not really here to convince people that this is the case but like that's why people get angry about that's why it feels frustrating and i want i'm trying to stay away from the topic itself because i want people to understand this is going to be true when you come in and tell people about a particular kind of glue putting together remote control boats and the remote control boat builders
John:
had discussions about this kind of glue 50 years ago and they just roll their eyes and be like look i know it seems like that kind of glue is the kind of glue you want to use i know you have a lot of information that you think supports your idea that kind of glue is trust me we've been debating this glue for 50 years and 25 years ago we all came to this conclusion and we revisit this topic from time to time to see if things have changed but they haven't and you're wrong and we don't have time to explain to you laboriously and
John:
Again, glue for model boats is much simpler than this topic.
John:
Right.
John:
So that's that's my reaction as a tired old person who is beaten down by even worse things happening in the world.
John:
Right.
John:
That I see this.
John:
I see the young person who is writing it.
John:
I know where that person is coming from.
John:
i know that person and i i've seen you know these exact arguments on these exact specific topics and it is depressing to have to have this argument again it's depressing that this these tired ideas get any kind of traction and yet people go out of their way to do the hard work to explain to this person and to anybody who reads this and you know like to explain to the world like you know
John:
Isn't it your job to educate me about, not really, but we're going to do it anyway because we know it's, you know, it's, it's, we have to do something.
John:
We can't just let it stand as it is.
John:
So many, many people did, you know, tried to explain what's wrong with this.
John:
And I'm not going to try to explain it here because I feel like the problem with this topic a lot of times on the show is, and any kind of podcast like this is, I think what I described in the hypercritical days as
John:
Having a slow motion argument with the Internet, a one sided slow motion argument with the Internet where you'll say a bunch of stuff, but there's no one on the show who actually is there to disagree with you.
John:
So you can't actually have a debate.
John:
So you have to debate the hypothetical person who's out there.
John:
And then you put the podcast out into the world and then you wait a week and a bunch of people reply and say, that's not what I think at all.
John:
Actually, I think X, Y, Z. And then you.
John:
debate those people's feedback but then you but then what about people who don't care about the topic anymore it's just it's impossible to have a slow motion debate with with a hypothetical person so that's why i'm trying to take this meta and also because like i said i think there's some really good articles about this and to be clear uh this this manifesto is totally bogus uh the the ideas embodied in it are are not the right ideas they are just
John:
you know it's explicable by all of the the the the sort of they're explicable by the experiences and the biases that the person who wrote it is bound to have had and so i think this is a learning opportunity for everybody involved why did he get fired do you think you should have been fired that's the i guess the controversy thing uh yeah i don't see how you can't fire him because how can you have an employee in your company who thinks
John:
women on average are genetically less capable than men to do the job like how can you have that person doing performance reviews or leading a team of people like how can you have that like if that's in people's secret hearts you don't know about it fine but if someone comes out and says this is what i believe you can't have that person doing performance reviews or women you can just have a segregated company and then segregate by everybody's biases right and never mind that you know these are all at will employees they can be fired for pretty much every reason any reason and
John:
uh you know misogyny is not a protected class like it's an idea like yeah like this is guess what if you if you uh call your boss a jerk every day and give him the finger you're also going to get fired because people who call their boss a jerk and give him the finger
John:
are not a protected class like there are so many things you can get do to get fired this of all the things at least is like pretty high-minded in terms of things you're getting fired for believe me you can get fired for way stupider stuff because that's the way employment works uh and so but yeah like there's yeah you have to fire and in fact it's they probably should have been fired faster but i'm sure you got to go through all the legal things or whatever um
John:
So anyway, I think I'm starting to get into the realm of where I'm going to start having a slow motion argument with the internet.
John:
I don't want to do that.
John:
What do you two have to say about this?
Marco:
I have very little to add because you just did a really good job of covering it.
Marco:
And I also don't want to get into the slow motion argument with the internet.
Marco:
The common people's grasp on what free speech protects them from...
Marco:
is about as good as their grasp on fair use and copyright which is not that good no copy intended no copyright intended marco so yeah i i would uh before making an argument about free speech uh i would investigate with some basic research what free speech actually gets you and what is actually an assurance of what it actually means and what it doesn't mean and yeah john i think he coded very well i i
Marco:
i i have to admit i did not fully read um james's memo or whatever it was manifesto whatever it was you know life is short and i could tell pretty pretty soon into it this was not going to be worth the the time i was going to spend reading it so i didn't um i decided to do anything else with my time besides read this honestly um rear end openings uh memo on what he thinks about people um so i i decided not to yep same here
John:
he provided a summary at the top although he called it a tldr because he's an millennial but yeah the summary of the top like you don't have to read the 10 pages read the five six point summary or whatever it's a it is a fit i mean he wrote the summary himself it is a fair encapsulation of the points made in the things you can look at only the summary and see yep no i've seen this idiot before yep i understand where he's coming from
Marco:
Yeah, no, I got about that far, and then I was like, yeah, this is – and then once – I thought that was the memo.
Marco:
And then once I saw that was simply the summary, I was like, oh, my God.
Marco:
Close tab.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
I'm done.
Marco:
I would also say that I think it's worth Google doing some introspection here about their own culture and about what is it about Google's culture.
Marco:
that would hire somebody who holds these ideas, that would foster someone's intellectual development who would hold these ideas, and that would make somebody think that it would be a good idea and would not get them fired to actually write this and circulate this within the company.
Marco:
That reveals, I think, cultural problems in that company, which should be a surprise to nobody, but...
John:
It should reveal some good aspects of culture, too, because the fact that he felt like he could say this shows that they have a culture where people feel like they can express themselves.
John:
Now, again, like a culture where you can express yourself doesn't mean you could say, you know what?
John:
I think we should eat babies and be surprised for people like gasp, right?
John:
Give them back to the baby eating, right?
John:
It's good to have an open culture, but you also have to be aware of, you know, what people might think of what you say, right?
John:
And...
John:
a lot of companies people would be afraid to say anything remotely about controversial about like any hr policy like you know the hr policy is like for example imagine apple getting the apple park thing like oh people aren't gonna have as many offices right if apple had a culture where everybody was terrified to make any kind of complaint about hey i kind of wish we still had offices i don't want to be an open office space right that would be a bad company culture you want to have a company culture where if people are super pissed about not having an office they feel like they can say hey i'm
John:
i don't want to lose my office apple i don't like the new apple park and complain right because that and just being a general adult in the world you could understand if you do it in a constructive way this is a a reasonable avenue of feedback within the company and a good company culture encourages people to do that because you don't want them to be secretly hating you and then quitting like you want you want to hear what the employees have to say but if their complaint is i don't want to work next to a woman
John:
You should at least be aware enough to know if you say that, they're going to get rid of you because you can't have an employee like that.
John:
It's like, how is it any different from offices?
John:
If you can't see the difference, like start there.
John:
What's different about saying I prefer offices to cubicles versus I can't be next to a woman when I work?
John:
Like figure it out, like work on it.
John:
Like I feel, you know, that was one of my first and only comments about this.
John:
which is snarky granted but you know i'm allowed some snark on twitter was like the the irony of someone at google writing this memo who so clearly has not even done the most cursory google search on the topic it's like no he's done google searches look at all these things he's citing like no i mean actually you know actually learning about the topic like his google is right there you can google yourself every one of these points and find all
John:
you know everything about them and why their bs like everywhere instead the only thing he googled for was you know cherry picked things that he thinks supports his ideas and that he can string together into this completely broken chain of logic and the other one anyway i don't i don't want to go to you can read the links to all the stuff but like but it's right there like no time has it been easier for you to educate yourself about this topic without having to be led by the nose by people more versed in the field like everything's right there the person works for google
John:
Uh, and it just, you know, that, that just blew my mind that, you know, sort of the, the incuriosity and the being content to, and, you know, as, as the economist response that one of the links will put in there, the motivated reasoning, like that no amount of access to the world's information can avoid that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
The thing that struck me about this was the little bit of feedback we got about it, which was a couple of people saying, please don't talk about this.
Casey:
But here's some anonymous feedback about why I think this guy was on the money.
Marco:
This was amazing to me.
Marco:
This was like, we actually got multiple pieces of feedback from people who were basically yelling at us in support of this James Hole before we ever talked about it.
John:
Right, right.
John:
It just happened, and they knew in the future there would be an episode of ATP recorded, and people said, I know you're going to want to talk about this, but don't.
John:
Well, we did.
John:
Sorry.
No.
Casey:
You don't talk about this, but here's what I think.
Casey:
And if anyone thinks otherwise, that's them silencing us, yada, yada, yada, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
The thing was, if it was just one individual, okay, fine.
Casey:
But this happened two or three times, and it was the same thing both times.
Casey:
Please, guys, don't talk about this.
Casey:
But if you do, you should consider the following.
John:
And by the way, to be clear, my example of the difference between I like offices instead of cubes versus I can't work next to a woman, neither one of those things is in the memo.
John:
I'm giving hypothetical examples to understand different classes of things that you might want feedback about.
John:
But actually, getting back to Marco's point, I think the fact that this person felt free to say this is a good reflection on Google's culture of
John:
letting people feel like they are free to give feedback the fact that this particular you know that are to have open discussions the content of this shows it doesn't reflect poorly on google other than their hiring practices or not being aware that this is this is happening and you know like this is on the person who wrote the thing not so much on google if you want to place blame on it it's not the culture that let him post the memo because that is more of just sort of like
John:
lack of self-awareness you know not understanding of the that other people exist in the world and how they might react to what you have to say right um but this is true of a lot of tech companies that you know if the interview is all uh coding on a whiteboard and uh you know solving brain teasers and making sure you had a good education and making sure you are reasonably personable and polite and then most critically
John:
Making sure that the people who you interview with say, oh, yeah, I could work with this person.
John:
Yeah, that seems like a person.
John:
Because people will say, oh, I could work with this person.
John:
He's just like me.
John:
I'm a dude who is a CS major who likes video games and blah, blah, blah.
John:
Yeah, no.
John:
Like, that's all there is in your interview is technical stuff and stuff.
John:
and uh brain teasers and education and work history and do you feel like you could work with this person it's very easy to get into you know speaking of echo chamber which is one of the complaints this thing is very easy to get into a situation where people hire other people that they're comfortable with um and so you may never dig deeper to say oh and by the way again this is not in the memo this is my silly example that's supposed to make you you know realize anyway uh would you have any problem working on a team with a woman
John:
maybe you can't ask that legally i don't even know like there's all sorts of weird things about hiring what you can and can't ask but um figuring that out like if the person says oh i would never work on a team with a woman don't don't hire that person right don't hire that person uh and if you never figure out that that's again that's not that's not what this person said i'm trying to give an extreme example i know people get confused by that like there's a hypothetical extreme example right if you're not sort of figuring that out if you don't have an interview process that weeds that out
John:
you'll never have a chance of weeding out the much more subtle things, which is like, maybe this person has some slightly less well-examined ideas about gender and diversity.
John:
And again, like, I don't think this person is super terrible.
John:
I heard they were vaguely involved in Gamergate, but who knows?
John:
I haven't been following this.
John:
But anyway, I think the ideas in this memo are ideas that a lot of smart people
John:
uh uh white dudes basically who have never faced any sort of uh oppression based on uh their uh gender or race um end up having not because they're bad people or they're evil or whatever but it's like
John:
Again, there's a reason all these ideas have come up before.
John:
It's not a logical conclusion, but it's like you find yourself going down these alleys.
John:
You find yourself having these thoughts.
John:
You find yourself coming to these conclusions.
John:
And especially if you have a slightly rebellious bent, there is something for you to rebel against, which is all these diversity ideas.
John:
There's a reason it's common.
John:
I don't think these people, this person is an aberration or a terrible person.
John:
It's just they're...
John:
And they have they have some things to learn.
John:
They have some living to do.
John:
They have some experience to gain.
John:
And you are able to get that experience and live that life and learn and change because most people who are on the other side of this started out somewhere more like this memo writer.
John:
and change and learn things like that they're not born like oh i'm a perfect angel from the beginning and i know everything and i don't have any prejudices and bias no especially if they're they are simply have similar backgrounds to this person they had to walk that same road and figure things out and stick their foot in the mouth and do stupid stuff and learn things the hard way right no we're not super enlightened wonderful we know everything in the beginning like my hope for this person is that he
John:
grows and evolves and you know comes you know that the people just mean to say that he grows up but like that's part it's not he's already an adult but you know just you don't stop growing up when you become quote unquote an adult you you keep growing up throughout your whole life hopefully uh and that's that's my hope for this person
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Fracture, who prints your photos in vivid color on great little minimal sheets of glass.
Marco:
Visit FractureMe.com slash podcast and mention ATP so they know that you came from here.
Marco:
Fracture is a photo decor company.
Marco:
They want to rescue your favorite images from the digital ether of these Facebook and Instagram and other social feeds where you put your pictures up there and then they're just gone after like a day and you never see them again.
Marco:
Get those photos printed and hang them in your house or put them in your office or give them as gifts.
Marco:
They make amazing gifts.
Marco:
They have these awesome glass prints.
Marco:
They print directly onto the glass and they have a laser cut rigid backing so they're ready to display right out of the box.
Marco:
They even include the wall anchor.
Marco:
All you have to do is upload your photo and pick your size.
Marco:
It is that simple.
Marco:
And the fracture printing process really makes the color and contrast pop.
Marco:
And the sleek, frameless design really lets your photo stand out.
Marco:
There's no frame needed.
Marco:
You don't have to get them framed.
Marco:
They are their own standalone thing.
Marco:
And they really fit in very nicely with any decorating style.
Marco:
So bring special memories to life, give them as unique gifts for friends or family, or just decorate your home with the moments to tell your story.
Marco:
Fractures come with a 60-day happiness guarantee, so you're sure to love your order, and each Fracture print is handmade in Gainesville, Florida, from U.S.
Marco:
source materials in a carbon-neutral factory, so you can feel good about it.
Marco:
And we have fractures all over our house.
Marco:
In fact, right now we're on vacation.
Marco:
I kind of miss the fractures.
Marco:
I think we should order a few more for here.
Marco:
This place could really use it.
Marco:
I think that's what I'm going to do after this week's podcast.
Marco:
I'm going to go order some fractures because we need some stuff on the walls here.
Marco:
That's more us.
Marco:
really make your moments visible in your home it's really wonderful and again they make wonderful gifts for more information and 10 off your first order visit fracture me.com slash podcast that lists podcasts there and you will tell them which one you heard from tell them atp because we're the best let's be honest here it helps support the show and it tells them that you came from here so fracture me.com slash podcast don't forget to pick atp in the survey there and once again thank you very much to fracture for sponsoring our show
Casey:
Apple apparently has said they're budgeting a billion dollars.
Casey:
That's B 1 billion for original TV shows and movies because, uh, uh, apparently that's the thing we need.
Casey:
So I'm not sure what to make of this.
Casey:
Like in and of itself, I have no issues with Apple trying to get into the content busy at business.
Casey:
Excuse me.
Casey:
Um, but, uh,
Casey:
So far, they have not shown us that they're terribly good at doing this sort of thing.
Casey:
So I don't know.
Casey:
Marco, what do you think about this?
Marco:
So with the actual budget and how it compares to other services and everything, people have commentary on whether this is enough money, whether it's a lot, whether it's a little.
Marco:
I don't know enough about the business of TV and movie production to even know what this buys you.
Marco:
All I do know is that so far Apple's original content for video, which for some reason appears on Apple Music, is bizarre at best and mostly pretty bad.
Marco:
Whatever has caused them to produce what they've produced so far, I think, is the same thing that caused them to do the whole U2 finger-touch thing and then shoving Songs of Innocence into everyone's libraries.
Marco:
They seem to have this...
Marco:
most of what they make is pretty cool and is pretty well considered.
Marco:
And then there's like the certain like blind spot that they get around certain types of content or celebrity things, which, which everything they make seems to be profoundly uncool and just fall on its face.
Marco:
A lot of the various like, you know, celebrity tie-ins they've done much of the efforts they've tried to do around Apple music.
Marco:
Sometimes like the weird intro videos to the conferences, stuff like that.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
A lot of this stuff just seems profoundly uncool and just flops.
Marco:
Certainly, I think Planet of the Apps qualifies big time for that list.
Marco:
And I suspect the carpool karaoke version they're doing, while I haven't seen it, the early impressions of it are similarly not very positive.
Marco:
So whatever is causing these things to be greenlit and to then be terrible, I hope they figure this out and fix that.
Marco:
For Apple to become a company that represents bad content, I think that hurts the whole brand.
Marco:
So it's a big risk they're taking here.
Marco:
And so far, it seems like it's not paying off at all.
Marco:
So far, it seems like it's actually harming them.
Marco:
If they do it right, it could be great.
Marco:
They could produce things as good as what Netflix and Amazon and HBO are making.
Marco:
They could make great original content.
Marco:
But they've made such bad original content so far that it's just kind of hard to see how they get from here to there.
John:
I think the last time we talked about this, I made the same point because I found it occurring to me again.
John:
I'm like, Oh, I think I talked about that already.
John:
But like, if you, if you fund content, uh, you shouldn't like, other than some vague sort of overarching theme, like Disney in general makes kind of family friendly stuff.
John:
Um, you shouldn't be influencing the things that you make.
John:
So everything that Apple makes doesn't have to be an athlete thing.
John:
Obviously, uh,
John:
Planet of the Apps is super aptly.
John:
Carbo Karaoke, not really aptly.
John:
So that's an okay one.
John:
But HBO makes all sorts of shows.
John:
They make Western, sci-fi, fantasy, drama, just comedies, stand-up comedy specials, documentaries.
John:
Insofar as there is an HBO brand, the brand is...
John:
good television for adults right disney is like family friendly stuff marvel is you know it's got superhero movies like star the star wars like just like there are overarching brands for things but in general you don't want apple to make like apple stuff and that that is uh something they have to get out from under because almost everything apple does is an apple thing and if you're making content you have to
John:
basically just be the money people here's a big bucket of money then get a bunch of people who know how to find talent and you know develop the shows and that's what they're doing they hired a bunch of people who had previously done this same job for for other people like they hired the guy from
John:
sony television or something that has had a bunch of things under his belt and they heard somebody else like it's a it's a different kind of business and it's not an easy business because it's like how you know how do i know what's the next breaking bad and what's the next planet of the apps like can i tell the difference between those two when they're being pitched to me right if i get a pitch for the next breaking bad can i actually develop it give them the right amount of money and get the right talent involved like
John:
you know it this was said about the phone business apple's not just going to walk in the entertainment business is a similarly difficult problem but it's much farther from apple's wheelhouse and apple can't use all its old tricks of we're going to build every show like we do an apple product nope nope the shows can't be an apple product some shows have to be the opposite of an apple product they have to be you know uh
John:
you know intense and involve sex and violence or they have to be goofy comedies uh you know or like things that just don't fit in the apple way um and again you can have a brand you can be you know like disney or like pixar and have a brand and and put everything under that umbrella but
John:
Its competitors' brands are, in general, content that wouldn't air on network television.
John:
Expensive television made for adults.
John:
So that's kind of what Amazon and Netflix and HBO have been doing.
John:
They're all spending more money on it than Apple still, which is fine.
John:
Apple's just getting started.
John:
Netflix's budget is $7 billion compared to Apple's budget of $1 billion.
John:
i think that's fine apple should not be putting seven billion towards something it doesn't know how to do yet right so you know figure out how to do it um amazon's 4.5 billion these are mostly their estimates from this article we'll link in the show notes and hbo is 2 billion um hbo's got a lot of bang for its buck because they they apparently really know how to develop shows they don't make a lot of shows but the ones they make they have a pretty good hit ratio and their hits are really big hits i mean they've been doing it for quite some time like they developed the skill over a very long time
John:
yeah and and you know it's it's a set it's you know it's people it's it's sets different people who know different people who know how to get things developed know what to buy what not to buy know how to make sure that the things produced in the same way that apple knows how to like oh i have an idea for a product but how do i make that product what people do i need to make that product a reality so that it actually works and what partners do i have to do like it's a difficult business um
John:
getting back to the broader issue of this thing, like the reason Apple is doing this, as we've discussed in the past is if Apple wants to be in this business of selling you video over the internet, everybody else is doing it.
John:
Uh, it is an important differentiator.
John:
Like eventually if everybody else has original content, like this is why I get Hulu.
John:
This is why I get Netflix.
John:
Like because of these specific shows and Apple doesn't have any of those, it has no more differentiator.
John:
Like if,
John:
Other than, oh, I bought a bunch of movies on iTunes unless I go and remove the DRM and I need an Apple TV to view them.
John:
very quickly these streaming services have stopped being differentiated by the fact that wow i can watch a video over the internet because they can all do that and they all have clients this is nothing they all have clients everywhere this is a question someone had on twitter uh i think maybe directed at us or maybe someone else is like am i gonna need an apple tv to watch this original tv content or will i be able to watch it not on an apple tv could i watch it in a web browser
John:
Could I watch it?
John:
Is it built into my television?
John:
And the answer so far is Apple's been like, well, no, you can watch it on your iPad, your iPhone, and your Apple TV.
John:
no place else can you watch it's not built into your tv you can't watch from a web browser you can't watch it in windows and it's like what nobody else is doing that if you want to watch netflix you can watch it everywhere you can watch netflix on your on your wristwatch on and you know it's it's everywhere nothing doesn't have netflix on it that's the strategy you need to do if you want to compete so uh that's the other thing i'm looking for is will apple go ipod on this and say yes we're going to make the ipod for windows yes we're going to let you watch
John:
whatever they're gonna and i have to divorce her from apple music obviously too because it's silly to continue with that charade right um if they really want to to play with their big competitors netflix amazon hbo hulu everybody else has got some kind of is funding some kind of original content table stakes is i can view it anywhere i want um and the original content is actually worth getting the service for and they've got a long way to go to get there
John:
I'll have someone pointed out that maybe you can watch it on iTunes and Windows.
John:
Probably true, but... iTunes and Windows is probably not the ideal viewing experience, and we're all rooting for iTunes to die anyway, right?
Marco:
I feel like this is one of those things, too, like... For this to succeed, you have to really go all in on it.
Marco:
You have to really... Like you were saying, like... Right now, it seems like these original content efforts are just these kind of, like...
Marco:
side projects that are a little bit promoted a little bit funded a little bit prioritized and they're kind of these things that that are made to try to boost apple music buzz and subscriptions which is totally wrong like that's not how you compete in the music space you don't compete there with video services that with with two or three original content lines like that's not at all how that works but
Marco:
I feel like if Apple really wants to do this, really do it.
Marco:
Like, really go all in, make it a big thing, maybe buy somebody like Netflix or HBO or something.
Marco:
Like, really go all out and really do it.
Marco:
I just, I don't see the value in kind of half-butting it like they've been doing seemingly so far.
Marco:
Like, why do a little bit of this kind of buried in this product that no one's looking for video in?
Marco:
Either don't do it or do it right.
Yeah.
John:
I think it's maybe like a slow start.
John:
Like, I don't know what the budget was before, but again, $1 billion is a smaller budget.
John:
Like, they're obviously getting serious about it and trying to hire more of the right people, but it's a slow start.
John:
Like, they're not coming in on day one and saying, we're going to put $10 billion, because they'd just blow it.
John:
They'd blow that $10 billion.
John:
They have no idea what to do with that money.
John:
Like, it's not...
John:
so i mean the slow start would be better if the few little things they made were actually good even if they're weird appended to just apple music but i mean the apple music thing i think is a learning experience and who knows maybe the carpool karaoke is going to be insanely popular just because we don't watch it like i know what carpool karaoke is people seem to like it it's you know even if it's not my particular thing sometimes they're amusing right and the reality show was a flop but like
John:
Some reality shows are hit.
John:
Some aren't.
John:
It wasn't a crazy idea.
John:
They just blew it.
John:
They didn't make something that people really want to watch.
John:
Probably, again, because I feel like they want to have some kind of Apple.
John:
We're Apple.
John:
What kind of synergy do we have?
John:
No, no.
John:
You don't need any synergy.
John:
Breaking Bad has no synergy with the people who fund it.
John:
It's just a good show.
John:
You just need to make it.
John:
stuff that people want to watch and it's really really hard and i can't help you with it i don't know how to do it either but uh hiring people who have done it in the past is a good start you know that's the difficulty about a lot of things like again with apple um very small teams small numbers of people uh the one or two or three people you have in charge of this with the most power are going to have a big influence and
John:
if you end up hiring the wrong people you know then that's bad uh like you get a paper master situation or even if you just get like a forestall can't get along with i've and you have to can one of them it's uh you know these are big companies with a lot of money at stake but in the end it comes down to just a small number of people
Casey:
So, Marco, you blogged for the first time in forever recently.
Casey:
I'm very proud of you.
Casey:
This is very exciting.
Casey:
Does it really count?
Casey:
Yeah, it counts.
Casey:
It turns out that Marco.org is still a thing.
Casey:
It hadn't been a thing for almost three months, but it is still a thing.
Casey:
However, Marco giveth and Marco taketh away.
Casey:
What happened to Send to Watch and Overcast?
Marco:
Basically, I had to pull it.
Marco:
I've already covered this pretty well, both in the blog post and in Under the Radar about two weeks ago.
Marco:
So I don't want to cover it too much here.
Marco:
But basically, I was using a crazy hack that would allow me to use good audio APIs on the Apple Watch.
Marco:
In watchOS 4, that doesn't work anymore.
Marco:
So now the only way to write this feature is to stop using the good audio APIs that allow my process to keep running and monitoring with AV Audio Player.
Marco:
And the only way to make this happen now is to use the old WK audio file player watch playback API, which basically is used in practice by, I think, almost nothing.
Marco:
Apple doesn't seem to use it for anything, which is probably why it's so incomplete and buggy.
Marco:
And it's a much larger, more complex pile of hacks because it involves transferring control of the playback to the system and your app stops running in the background.
Marco:
And then the system will wake you up occasionally, maybe, if you are lucky, when things happen like the queue runs out or the track is over or something else, but that's about it.
Marco:
It forces a certain type of interaction with the now playing glance that does not work at all for podcasts.
Marco:
It makes a very bad experience for podcasts.
Marco:
So things like if you hit the seek forward button, it immediately stops playing the current podcast and either moves to the next one if there is one or just stops.
Marco:
Instead of skipping forward 15 seconds or whatever you actually want.
Marco:
Things like that.
Marco:
There's all sorts of little shortcomings like that.
Marco:
This API was designed for music.
Marco:
It was clearly designed so that somebody like a Spotify or something could make a sync to Apple Watch feature and have the Apple Watch play a playlist of music.
Marco:
When you apply the same API to podcasts, there are so many shortcomings and bugs and weird behaviors with the system that are just not at all what podcast listeners want or need that it makes for a very bad experience.
Marco:
So early on when I was developing the send to watch feature,
Marco:
I was basing it on this API because this seemed to be the only way to do it.
Marco:
And I actually decided to not ship it.
Marco:
I spent months on it.
Marco:
And after fighting with this API over and over again, I decided it was so bad, I can't ship this feature.
Marco:
So I didn't.
Marco:
I found a bunch of bugs.
Marco:
I talked to people on Apple to make sure they knew about them and everything.
Marco:
How many apps are using this?
Marco:
Of all the needs that watchOS has...
Marco:
This might satisfy like 10 apps, maybe like almost nobody needs this feature.
Marco:
So I can understand why this doesn't seem to be a priority for them to to really improve audio playback APIs in the watch, especially because this one probably works OK enough for music syncing.
Marco:
So it's really only podcast and audio book and other long form audio syncing that would actually need this.
Marco:
My hack that allowed me to use AV Audio Player allowed me to ship a version of this feature that was minimally acceptable.
Marco:
It still wasn't good.
Marco:
There's still lots of other problems with the feature, like how long it takes to transfer data, how I, as the
Marco:
as like basically as the programmer and that therefore you as the user don't have any indication of whether a transfer is in progress or how long it's going to take like the reason that's not exposed in the UI is that I don't have that information the API doesn't provide that information so like there's
Marco:
There's all sorts of shortcomings in the APIs and the technical limitations of these platforms, most of which are very understandable because most of which are like, yeah, you know what?
Marco:
The watch is a low-power device.
Marco:
It needs to squeeze every bit of power it can out of the tiny little parts and batteries that it has.
Marco:
Most of these are very understandable things.
Marco:
But the reality is it was barely possible to make a barely acceptable version of this feature.
Marco:
And now that the audio API has changed and has forced me to go back to the old one that I deemed unshippable probably nine months ago when I first tried to do this, that has now made this feature unshippable again.
Marco:
Unfortunately, I've already shipped it.
Marco:
So I had to remove this feature.
Marco:
And that's never an easy decision to make.
Marco:
It's not a very popular thing to do.
Marco:
I'm getting a good number of one-star reviews from it, which I expected.
Marco:
That was part of the calculus to do it.
Marco:
I had to weigh that.
Marco:
But I removed the feature now.
Marco:
And if I can bring it back in the future as the APIs and the hardware mature, I would love to do that.
Marco:
Because I already wrote most of the hard stuff to do this.
Marco:
But there is simply...
Marco:
No good way to play podcasts in the background on the Apple Watch in watchOS 4.
Marco:
And hopefully that'll change over time.
John:
Do you have any hopes of them changing it?
John:
Maybe if Apple adds offline, watch playback of podcasts to their podcast app?
John:
Do you know, do you have any info like, oh, not this release, this release you're stuck, but next year they'll be updating all these APIs to be podcast savvy?
John:
Because podcasts are not obscure.
John:
They're obviously not as important as music, right?
John:
But in this release they did the thing that lets you mess with the music during your workout in an easier way so they understand that people are controlling
John:
audio playback on their watches so do you think next year you know do you have expectations at wwc like oh new apis that make it possible to do this again or you just like have no real hope of them addressing this because it doesn't seem like a thing they care about
Marco:
Well, there's still a lot of technical limitations.
Marco:
So with the new music syncing, in WatchOS 4, they demoed during the keynote that there's this kind of new automatic music syncing kind of thing where it just kind of automatically can sync a playlist for you based on what you like or based on what you've sliced it or whatever else.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And so I think the way this seems to work is overnight, while it's charging on the charger, it's doing these data transfers that can be large and time-consuming.
Marco:
So that way it doesn't have to worry about speed being low or about using too much power.
Marco:
For a podcast-like feature to work, that's probably how it really has to be.
Marco:
Because problem number one, which I never solved, was it's too slow to transfer data to the watch.
Marco:
And I did all sorts of crazy hacks.
Marco:
I wrote a whole transcoding engine that would transcode it to a lower bitrate and then send it because that was actually faster than just sending it to begin with at its original size.
Marco:
So solving that speed problem, that's a huge problem.
Marco:
And it's going to take, I think, multiple generations probably of the hardware being improved before that's no longer a big problem.
Marco:
So as long as data transfer to the watch is still slow...
Marco:
Syncing podcasts to it is always going to be awkward or clunky because podcasts don't work the same way as music.
Marco:
With music, you can sync a playlist overnight and that's it.
Marco:
You're done.
Marco:
You're probably not going to want to change that in the middle of the day by sending all of a sudden 60 megs of new information to it that you really want to be available right this second, right now.
Marco:
Whereas with podcasts, that happens.
Marco:
If this works the same way that it worked in the iPod days, back when podcasts first came out a decade ago, the idea of an episode coming out and then you having to wait until you got home to sync it to your iPod and listen to it maybe the next day
Marco:
That was how we did things back then.
Marco:
But now things are better.
Marco:
Now we don't live in the Stone Age anymore.
Marco:
Now, when a new episode comes out, you expect to be able to hit play immediately and start playing it.
Marco:
And so to have that kind of experience with The Watch with podcasts...
Marco:
You can't wait for it to sync overnight.
Marco:
You can't wait for like, oh, next time I plug in the watch, I'll have some kind of system to automatically sync stuff over while it's charging overnight.
Marco:
That's not a good enough experience.
Marco:
What you need is something that you can say, I want to listen to this right now.
Marco:
Go.
Marco:
And have it be not a significant amount of time before you can do that.
Marco:
I think long term, the way this is solved is...
Marco:
the watch becomes a full-blown client of the app with its own downloads and its own sync to the servers and is no longer tethered to the phone app as much as it is now.
Marco:
Long-term, that is probably the right solution.
Marco:
But that requires large advances in the hardware and software before that's possible.
Marco:
That would require, first of all, the rumored cellular watch or at least more frequent Wi-Fi connectivity or whatever.
Marco:
That would require things that we don't have today, really, to do that very well.
Marco:
The other thing is on the software side, I don't know the fine details of this.
Marco:
In fact, I bet Steve Trout and Smith probably knows a lot more about this than I do.
Marco:
When you write apps for the iPhone, most of the APIs you're using are the exact same APIs that Apple uses.
Marco:
The incentive is pretty strong for Apple to keep those things up to date because they use them too.
Marco:
So if there's like a bug in UI kit, it's probably going to affect Apple also in their own apps and their own development.
Marco:
So they have a pretty strong incentive to fix that.
Marco:
Whereas on the watch, developers have only had access to WatchKit.
Marco:
We don't have straight UIKit.
Marco:
It seems, I think, I'm not positive on this, but I think Apple is using lower-level APIs.
Marco:
Apple seems to be using something like UIKit to make their apps on the watch.
Marco:
But we, developers, are using this kind of subset that we're kind of being forced to use, and we can't use the real APIs on the watch.
Marco:
And so what we are using, Apple doesn't seem to have a very strong incentive to fix what we use.
Marco:
Because I don't think they're using it.
Marco:
And especially the audio playback APIs.
Marco:
What I have seen so far with the limitations and bugs that they have...
Marco:
I don't think Apple uses any of them on the watch that we use.
Marco:
I honestly don't.
Marco:
Apple is probably using AV Foundation directly on the watch.
Marco:
But we don't have access to that in any kind of way that we can actually background on the watch.
Marco:
We only have foreground access to some of those things and background access to this awful WK Audio File Player thing that has all the bugs.
Marco:
So until that changes, like until Apple's using the same things we are using on the watch, I don't think it's ever going to be an amazing development platform to make advanced type of apps like a podcast player.
Marco:
I hope that changes.
Marco:
I really do.
Marco:
But so far...
Marco:
It seems like we are using these kind of baby APIs, these training wheel APIs on the watch that existed at first because it was just so limited and so low-powered and the first watch kit was this huge hack where the thing ran on the phone and it was kind of beamed over.
Marco:
It made sense then a little bit.
Marco:
But now, I want real API access in the watch.
Marco:
I want low-level UI frameworks and full-blown audio frameworks and exactly what we have on the phone in regards to what I mentioned earlier about how...
Marco:
when the watch crazy API, if a user hits next track or forward, it just stops a podcast if it's playing in the background.
Marco:
And like the podcast player on the watch can't do what we've done on iOS for ages, which is interpret the remote control event manually.
Marco:
Interpret the event that is sent from a headphone clicker or the lock screen or your car Bluetooth or whatever that says next track.
Marco:
And instead of doing next track on iOS, we can say, oh, we'll just move it forward 15 seconds or we can respond however we want to that.
Marco:
On the watch, none of those APIs are there.
Marco:
We have no way to interact with the remote controls.
Marco:
We have no way to set what appears on the now playing screen besides a very, very limited thing with this crazy audio player API.
Marco:
You can kind of set it, but then it's kind of unreliable.
Marco:
Even basic stuff I found, like, if you hit pause, it doesn't pause.
Marco:
Like, it's half the time, like, two seconds after you hit play or pause, the button flips over back the other way.
Marco:
It's, like, crazy stuff.
Marco:
It just doesn't work.
Marco:
Every time I've worked against those APIs, I have felt like I'm the first person to ever have used them.
Marco:
So to answer the actual question you asked me 25 minutes ago, I think it will eventually hopefully become possible to write a good standalone podcast player on the watch.
Marco:
But I don't think that's coming soon because too much has to mature.
Marco:
We need hardware advancements for battery and power and data transfer speeds.
Marco:
We need all those things to improve.
Marco:
We need the ability for apps to actually stay running in the background as they're playing audio, not just do what watchOS tries to do now and kill us in the backgrounds and leave this weird standalone file player that's run by the system.
Marco:
No, we need what we have on the phone, basically.
Marco:
The phone had this a very long time ago, so maybe we aren't that far off.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But whatever it is, we need API parity in a lot of these areas between the watch and the phone.
Marco:
And not only do we not have that, but it almost feels like Apple doesn't want to do that on the watch.
Marco:
It seems like they think that this is all the audio exposure we need right now.
Marco:
And I don't know if that's an ideological thing or if that's reacting to limitations of the current hardware.
Marco:
Either way, that has to change.
Marco:
And that's a big change, so I don't expect for it to be soon.
John:
So if you got... I'm trying to think of the minimal stuff that you would need for this because it's going to be a while before you get full access to the APIs that Apple has, if ever.
John:
If you just got cell data and the ability to run in the background, at the very least, you could make...
John:
a very simple streaming only uh player that communicates with uh that that pulls the data from wherever the the podcast is and that communicates with your server in a lightweight way to keep sort of the timestamp updated right because if you it was that's not that's not heavy background work you're like um you know pull it pulling data for this podcast
John:
You know, you have plenty of time to slurp it up when your connection is good and then just sleep for a while, you know, whatever.
John:
So the input of the audio data is fine.
John:
And you've got to communicate with your server a little bit every, you know, you can do it every minute.
John:
Who knows?
John:
Like just say, oh, update the play position, update the play position or whatever.
John:
And then I guess minimal interface to the controls to understand what you have to have control over when you hit the next and previous to do something different than doing something ridiculous.
Yeah.
John:
And that, I think, you know, I know this entire section is about offline watch playback, but this, I think, would fulfill all the needs.
John:
Like, I don't need to bring my phone with me.
John:
I can just wear my watch and I can listen to my podcast.
John:
But what I was mostly getting at with the question about do you have any expectations, A, if you had any inside information about it.
John:
I don't.
John:
Presumably Apple...
John:
will eventually on its list of things that we want to add to the watch get to the point where people like yeah people do like to listen to music on their watch they also would like to probably listen to podcasts on their watch they know how many people listen to podcasts they have their stats for the podcast app that comes bundled with your phone podcasts are a thing again not as big as music
John:
eventually i think apple will get around to the idea of like oh it's silly that you can't listen to podcasts on your watch without your phone with you especially now that we have the second generation of this watch with cell data access right so they will get to it eventually so i feel like there's hope for you you're not just like swinging in the wind we're like they're just never going to get to me but i don't know what the timeline looks like on that it's some it's very difficult to tell how much apple cares about podcasts sometimes
Marco:
Well, it's also – this is the kind of feature that – believe me, I've run into lots of these.
Marco:
If you ask people if they want this feature, a certain number of them will say, yes, of course I want that feature.
Marco:
Or a certain number of them will email you without you even asking saying, please, I want this feature.
Marco:
But then if you actually give it to them, the number of people who actually use it is usually, or not usually, often for some of these features, way, way lower than what they thought before they had it.
John:
It's also the usability.
John:
I remember when I tried to send it to the watch, it's not easy to just figure out even how to do it.
John:
And then when you do figure out how to do it, the fact that it doesn't work that well will discourage people from using it.
Marco:
Sure.
Marco:
And I think a lot of people had that same experience with playing music on the watch through Apple's apps.
Marco:
Like, the reason they had to do this kind of overnight automatic syncing thing with watchOS 4 is because before that, when you had to kind of manually pick stuff to sync over rather than wait, you know, forever for it to transfer...
Marco:
That was terrible.
Marco:
It was so bad, most people didn't do it.
Marco:
Even now, on the watch, I find the playback experience, even if you can get the data there, the playback and control experience on the watch is really rough compared to what you have on the phone.
Marco:
Again, this goes back to my thing of never bet against the smartphone.
Marco:
The smartphone is really good at this stuff.
Marco:
It is very rare that
Marco:
I do something on my watch to interact with a podcast that is at all non-trivial that I don't regret not just taking out my phone and doing it there.
Marco:
If you're doing something like skip to the next chapter, fine.
Marco:
Take out the watch app, do it there.
Marco:
It's fast.
Marco:
If you're walking, that's fine.
Marco:
But for anything non-trivial, I find it very hard to do anything on the watch, not even just with audio in general.
Marco:
And there have been lots of other overcast features where people have asked for it or wanted it.
Marco:
Some of the things I haven't even released because, for example, the Sonos integration.
Marco:
Right now, as I mentioned, I think somewhere on Twitter or something, there's an API limitation that basically makes it, in my opinion, not good enough to ship.
Marco:
Sound familiar?
Marco:
So I'm not shipping it.
Marco:
But I found in my testing of the Sonos integration...
Marco:
It was not a very good experience.
Marco:
And I mostly just preferred to have podcasts playing through my phone speaker sitting on the counter or eventually upgraded to an iPad Pro with big speakers in it.
Marco:
So an iPad Pro on the counter is by far the best way to play podcasts out in the open at home by a long shot.
Marco:
It's way better than Sonos, way better than Echo.
Marco:
It's just a way better experience.
Marco:
You don't listen to podcasts the same way you listen to music.
Marco:
There's a lot more interaction involved.
Marco:
If somebody mentions a link, you want to look at the show notes.
Marco:
You might want to seek around a little bit or look at a chapter list or skip ahead or skip commercials or whatever else.
Marco:
There's much more interaction with podcasts than what you have with music.
Marco:
These systems that are designed for music playback, when you try to play podcasts with them, it sounds like a good idea, and it sounds like it would be awesome, but trust me, when you actually get it, it's not nearly as good as just using your phone or using an iPad that's sitting up on the counter.
Marco:
So there's a lot of these features, and I think watch playback is just one of these things that the nature of interacting with the watch, it's so limited.
Marco:
The software is so limited.
Marco:
The hardware, the ergonomics are so limited because it's such a tiny little device.
Marco:
I don't think it's ever going to be a great experience to play and manage podcasts on the watch.
Marco:
It's going to be something that people will ask for forever, and some people will use it, no question.
Marco:
I'm not saying nobody will use it, but I'm saying very few people will, even if it's done well.
Marco:
Even if I do everything right, and even if the hardware gets a little bit better and things get a little bit faster, I still don't think it's going to be a very good experience compared to just taking out your phone and doing it there.
Casey:
You know, you said something earlier, Marco, about the potential for an LTE-equipped watch.
Casey:
And I was on Clockwise earlier today.
Casey:
And that was actually the question I brought up is, hey, would you be interested in an LTE-equipped watch?
Casey:
And, you know, why or why not?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And not to rehash that too much, but what I was saying was I've been running a few times a week lately, and we'll see how long that sticks, but it's been sticking for a while now.
Casey:
It's been a couple of months.
Casey:
And it occurred to me recently that part of the reason I bring my phone when I run is because if I were to somehow really injure myself—
Casey:
I'd really want to be able to call like Aaron or an ambulance if it really was that bad.
Casey:
And if I had a watch that had the mechanism by which I could do that, presumably with LTE, although I saw some rumblings earlier today saying that maybe it would be data only and not permit phone calls, but either way.
Casey:
If I had a watch that could call for help some way, somehow, then maybe I wouldn't need to bring my phone with me, which would be nice that I wouldn't have to, you know, because currently I carry it.
Casey:
I don't have one of those peculiar armbands or anything.
Casey:
And it occurred to me, wow, you know, it would be really great to be able to listen to my podcast on my, oh, crap.
Casey:
And so I definitely am not one that had used the send to watch feature in Overcast while it was there, but I am on a series zero watch and I think I'll probably upgrade this year.
Casey:
And yeah, it would be pretty cool if that came back.
Casey:
So count me in as one of those people that's looking forward to you somehow figuring out a way to make this work again, presumably with API changes.
John:
By the way, Steve Trout and Smith actually gave us the name of the thing that Apple's apps use on the watch in the tradition of weird internal Apple names.
John:
I mean, Springboard's kind of weird, too.
John:
The weird code names, like what is the watch, like the code name Gizmo or something.
John:
Anyway, WatchKit runs on top of Pepper UI Core, like, you know, Black Pepper.
John:
And Pepper UI Core runs on top of UIKit.
John:
How do you know it isn't about bell peppers?
John:
I don't know what it's about.
John:
Maybe Chris Pepper.
John:
Yeah, could be.
John:
It corrects your typos for you.
John:
Mm-hmm.
John:
Joke with an audience of seven people.
Marco:
Yay.
Marco:
Thanks for our sponsors this week.
Marco:
Fracture, Eero, and Aftershocks.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
Cause it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at atp.fm.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C, USA Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental, they didn't mean to.
Casey:
I have some bike follow-up.
Casey:
Ah, excellent.
John:
Let's talk about bikes.
John:
I saw your bike, or Tiff's bike, and I couldn't figure out if that was your, I'm going to buy the bike, and if I don't like it, I'm going to give it to Tiff, or if it was an entirely separate, dedicated Tiff bike.
Marco:
Well, it was the bike that I was buying for probably TIFF, but I was going to see if I liked it.
Marco:
And so that's kind of why I bought it first.
Marco:
I was going to use my opinion of that to inform what I was going to get for myself.
Marco:
And that bike was the Priority Coast.
Marco:
Priority, they seem to be a pretty good bike company.
Marco:
They're a New York-based company.
Marco:
They started on Kickstarter.
Marco:
And they do all belt drive bikes.
Marco:
I mentioned last year that I like the belt drive for the lack of maintenance and better everything.
Marco:
So I like the belt drive.
Marco:
And that's what I wanted.
Marco:
The Priority Coast is their Beach Cruiser model.
Marco:
I got it kind of thinking, I don't think I want a beach cruiser.
Marco:
I think I wanted like a little bit more like a forward position.
Marco:
Like I've, I always enjoyed mountain bikes more than most other thing, most other bike shapes, I guess.
Marco:
Um, and you know, that kind of like, the kind of forward position with the straight bars and the handbrakes and everything like that.
Marco:
I just like that better.
Marco:
I think, um,
Marco:
But this is a beach town, and literally every other bike in town, except for the cop bikes, are beach cruisers.
Marco:
Even one of the cops has a beach cruiser.
Marco:
The rest have mountain bikes.
Marco:
But anyway, I thought that I should probably try that.
Marco:
So we did...
Marco:
And it is a little bit big for me, which I kind of expected going into it.
Marco:
So it's a little bit big.
Marco:
And I really don't like the coaster brake.
Marco:
This seems like a beach cruiser thing that all beach cruisers have that, you know, where you pedal backwards to brake the coaster brakes.
Marco:
I just I was not I've taken that bike out a few times and I just could not get into the coaster brake.
Marco:
It also it has the coaster brake seemingly as like the main brake.
Marco:
And then it also has a front only handbrake.
Marco:
and that to me was very confusing i think if this was going to be my bike i would actually remove the front handbrake because to have like half of one method of braking but the main method of braking be the other thing like it was it was just very confusing like i want to have that on there because coaster brakes suck and if you need to stop in an emergency they don't want you to die because the coaster brakes can't stop you you know so right i mean really it's just friction boy even if the coaster brakes could lock up the back wheel
John:
you will stop faster if you could also do something to stop the front wheel.
John:
So that would be a bad idea to get a bike with coaster brakes and remove.
John:
I've actually seen bikes with hand brakes that only have the back hand brake.
John:
Like you need, you want something pinching both the front and the back wheels because you need both contact patches to stop you in emergency.
John:
So don't, don't do that.
Marco:
Well, and, you know, my needs here are lower because, again, like because they're all like sidewalks full of people that you're riding on, like there's no roads.
Marco:
There's like these broad sidewalks and they're all full of people and wagons and stuff.
Marco:
So, like, you actually can't go that fast most of the time.
Marco:
You're going to hit a deer.
Marco:
Yeah, that actually is a concern or a fox or deer is going to hit you.
Marco:
Yeah, that's more like it.
Marco:
Anyway, so that was fine.
Marco:
I then, after lots of resurrection waffling, as you know I'm prone to do, I decided... Yeah, right?
Marco:
So I am now driving a CVT just for John.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
John:
So what brand is this?
Marco:
It's also a priority.
Marco:
It's their Continuum Onyx model.
Marco:
It's basically their high-end road bike.
Marco:
I have some issues with it.
Marco:
It's not a road bike like a road bike.
Marco:
It's like a... It's a commuter bike.
Marco:
So it's not like a racing... The handlebars don't have those dipped-down U shapes.
John:
Road bike is a term of art.
John:
Sorry.
John:
It's like a 10-speed type thing, but not the ones with the really skinny tires.
Marco:
Yeah, it's a commuter bike.
Marco:
I have some issues with it.
Marco:
Their fenders are pretty low quality on both of the bikes, and they rattle a little bit even when they're tightened and everything.
Marco:
The fenders are also slightly asymmetrical, which is – I can't tell if it's intentional or not.
Marco:
Like they look just kind of crooked.
Marco:
So I'm probably actually going to remove the fenders because they just kind of are annoying me.
Marco:
And I think in retrospect this was a bad choice for a beach town because it has these really skinny high-pressure tires.
Marco:
And while that might be great on a well-paved road when you're commuting to work, I guess there's a reason why every other bike that I pass in the beach town has these, like, two-inch-wide cruiser tires.
Marco:
Like, there's a reason for that.
Marco:
And so when you're riding along these walks that are all, like, you know, old concrete, you know, it's like riding on an old sidewalk.
Marco:
So, you know, you're going ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, ba-bump, like, as you go.
Marco:
Like, you just hit – you're feeling every bump.
Marco:
And on these tires, you feel it a lot.
Marco:
So I'm actually –
Marco:
I think I might go to the bike guy in town and see if he has any larger tires that would still fit these rims to not make it too big of a project.
Marco:
And the seat is like sitting on a rock.
Marco:
They call it the priority comfort seat or saddle, I think they call them.
Marco:
Bike people call them saddles for some reason.
Marco:
I don't know what part of this is comfortable exactly, but it's certainly not the part that my butt is sitting on.
Marco:
Yeah.
John:
um i have to fix that as well fortunately that's an easy fix there's lots make sure you get a prostate friendly one i was not aware there was a difference uh the one you have is that like you you're distinguishing by like there being a big split in the middle you're like why why is this seat split in half yeah yeah it has like a little hole in the middle right um so sometimes they just give a suggestion of a crease there which i feel like doesn't help and sometimes there's actually an air gap there but anyway you want something like that
Marco:
okay good noted so so i have that you probably you probably want for your sensitive tushy like a gel seed or some other thing that's squishy yeah like like the the the old rusted out mountain bike i thought i was riding here beforehand that only technically has like three gears left if it's 21 um that one has like an aftermarket gel seed on it and that that was always fine for me so i'm either i i ordered someone on amazon that was well reviewed we'll see how it how it goes when it gets here in three years because getting things here from amazon is tricky
Marco:
uh anyway so you know replacing the seat that otherwise it's very nice i really love disc brakes this is my first time i've ever ridden a bike that has disc brakes it's such a massive difference over the regular like v-style calipers that go on the rim it stops like on a dime it's amazing so big fan of that um big fan of generally the handling of the shape of the bike although again the tires are way too skinny so i'm going to work on that too
Marco:
and the CVT is amazing.
Marco:
It shouldn't be as good as it is, but it's just really, really nice.
Marco:
One of the advances, and there are gear hubs that do this too, you can shift.
Marco:
Even when you're at a stop, you can still shift.
Marco:
So if you are going in a high gear, have to stop really fast, and don't have time to shift all the way back down, it doesn't matter.
Marco:
Just twist the handle, you're in the low gear, you just go.
Marco:
Because it's a CVT and because you can just kind of twist as often as you like on that gear in any interval you like, I find myself shifting way more than I would on a derailleur style bike.
Marco:
I wouldn't say it's necessary.
Marco:
Like I'd be fine with a geared setup or even with a fixed gear for most of the time I ride here.
Marco:
But it's really nice to have this.
Marco:
That way you can like, you know, if I'm slowing down for a turn or something.
Marco:
I've automatically started going into the lower gears and then moving back out as I pedals, going back up.
Marco:
It's really cool.
John:
Make sure you do rev matching.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Down shifting for the corner.
John:
Blip the pedal, literally.
Marco:
Yeah, so anyway, it was probably not the best bike to get for the beach because of its incredibly hard ride that's obviously designed for smooth roads and not sidewalks.
John:
Yeah, no shocks on this one, right?
Marco:
Yeah, no shocks.
Marco:
It seems like shocks are passe in fancy bikes.
Marco:
It seems like nobody wants to build shocks anymore.
John:
Well, for mountain bikes, you need them or anything that's on uneven terrain.
John:
You need it for not for not just for comfort, but also for control.
Marco:
I also it's been so since we recorded, I also got curious about sandbikes or fat bikes as bike people seem to call them.
Marco:
The ones that have like five inch wide giant sand tires.
Marco:
Those you occasionally see those around here.
Marco:
And I thought that could be interesting.
Marco:
Then I could ride past the crazy point of woods fence and I could expand my horizons in the directions so I could get more distance if I can ride on the sand.
Marco:
So since we last recorded about two weeks ago, I spent this time researching fat bikes and looking around for places that I could maybe rent one or try one.
Marco:
And it wasn't until about two days ago that I learned that my neighbor has one and he let me borrow it and showed me how to use it on the sand.
John:
have you ever ridden on sand?
John:
I've run on sand.
John:
You ever run on sand?
Marco:
Yeah.
Casey:
That's not fun either.
Marco:
I knew it would be challenging.
Marco:
I did not realize to what degree it would be challenging.
Marco:
So I get out there and this is like, it's a perfect setup.
Marco:
Like it's pretty low tide.
Marco:
He's showing me exactly where on the sand to ride.
Marco:
Like to, so it's like optionally packed or optimally packed down, slightly damp, but not like super wet sand, you know?
Marco:
So you, so you're, and, and the bike has like these large five inch low pressure tires and,
Marco:
So, you know, so it's it's the ideal setup, really.
Marco:
Like it was it would be hard to find a better setup than the setup I had.
Marco:
And so I first started going.
Marco:
And for about the first 30 feet or so, I'm like, this is easy.
Marco:
What was I what was I so concerned about?
Marco:
This is this is nothing.
Marco:
and then after you know as you keep going you're like wait a minute like i have to maintain this level of resistance like indefinitely like it's not like a quick hill where like you go up the hill and then you're flat for a while then you can coast for a while you have like low resistance no it's like to keep moving it's like you're going up a pretty sizable hill all the time
Marco:
it so i i lasted something like two or three hundred feet before i was like all right i'm done like i can't do any more of this turned around went back to him and i'm like all right thanks i'm like this this ride is either going to save me a 50 rental fee from the place in town or it's going to cost me a thousand dollars to buy one of these bikes for the first time ever i didn't buy the thing yeah
John:
Well, now you're researching e-sandbikes, though.
Marco:
Of course I researched e-sandbikes.
Marco:
Because those are only about $1,500.
Marco:
Only.
Marco:
Honestly, that's not... Compared to the price of e-bikes and the price of sandbikes, that actually is a really good price.
Marco:
But anyway, my issue with those is like, what's the point then?
Marco:
The whole reason I'm riding is for exercise and getting myself... And the challenge of it and...
Marco:
The e-bike thing I think makes more sense if you're doing commuting.
Marco:
There's some other reasons why you're doing this besides just the exercise value.
Marco:
If you were a delivery person using a bike or if you're...
Marco:
If you had to ride between these towns and you had to go on the beach to ride between certain ones like for your job or something, that'd be a different story.
Marco:
Then that would make more sense.
Marco:
But for my purposes as like this is mainly for exercise, an e-bike is it kind of misses the point, I think.
John:
Well, what about exploring at this point that you want to explore beyond a certain point that you hadn't gone beyond before?
John:
You want to find new places to get Lyme disease.
John:
You should use the e-bike for that to let you go exploring in areas where previously you would have been too tired to get to.
Marco:
I think a more responsible thing to do is to just keep biking until I'm strong enough to do the sandbike thing.
Marco:
That is what I should do.
Marco:
It probably isn't what I will do, but that is what I should do.
John:
You can just walk.
John:
You can just walk on the beach.
John:
You can just walk on the sand.
John:
Feet work really well.
Marco:
No.
John:
What are you, crazy?
John:
No.
Marco:
so somehow we they go up and down beaches on long island and we have no bikes just just our feet make sure you bring shoes sand is hot it is pretty frustrating though like when like you will occasionally see somebody with an e-sand bike drive by as you're on the beach you're like damn it
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So anyway, what I ideally still want is basically what I mentioned last time is my high end option, the Budnitz bicycle, the Model 3 or number 3.
Marco:
I keep getting their names confused with Tesla's names because they have some that begin with model and some that begin with number.
Marco:
Anyway, I want the Budnets number three, and I will probably end up ordering one of those for home.
Marco:
And then maybe next summer, I'll get one for the beach.
Marco:
But we'll see.
Marco:
Because this summer is almost over, and you can't get them.
Marco:
They're made to order, so it takes a few weeks to get them.
Marco:
So it's too late for the summer anyway.
Marco:
But I think that's what I want here is basically a high-spec bike that also has wide tires, but not quite sand tire-wide.
John:
Where are you going to ride it at home?
John:
On streets or are there like paths you can go on?
Marco:
Mostly streets, but there also is... I live near the old Croton Aqueduct Trail.
Marco:
I would probably ride on that.
Marco:
Lots of people do.
Marco:
There's also nearby bike trails.
Marco:
Then I have to become like the person who like puts their bike on their car and brings it places and...
Marco:
I might get there sometime.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But I don't know anything about that world yet.
Marco:
And so I'm a little resistant to that.
Marco:
But one thing I think I might get into this is that this is actually I've only told you about two of the three bikes that I've bought since we last talk.
Marco:
The third one was the tiny version, which I bought for my son.
Marco:
Because they also sell, Priority also sells, the Priority Start, which is a tiny belt drive fancy bike made by hipsters in New York.
John:
I'm sure he appreciates all the nuances of this very expensive fancy bike.
Marco:
First of all, compared to other well-rated kids' bikes...
Marco:
It was surprisingly inexpensive.
Marco:
The bike that everyone else told us to get, which was the Isla or Isla bike or Isla bike, however you pronounce that, that's like $400.
Marco:
This was $250.
Marco:
So compared to those, that's actually not that bad.
Marco:
I could also get this quickly.
John:
That's pretty cheap for a kid bike.
John:
The problem with these kids' bikes is a throwaway bike.
John:
He's going to grow three inches in the next two weeks and it's like, oh, now he's too big for that bike because it's like kids' clothes.
Marco:
yeah well fortunately he got we got the 16 inch size and he is like he's barely tall enough to make it now so that way he has the most time to actually use it before he gets too tall for it um and it's a pretty well specced bike like it has it has dual handbrakes like you know real v brakes on both wheels not a coaster brake um and it has the carbon belt instead of the chain because once he saw tiffs and then mine and we and he he asked about why those are there and i explained why it's superior and so of course he wanted one and
John:
so now we have three people riding priority bikes he hasn't quite gotten it yet but i bet within the next few days he'll he'll be pretty good on it do you have the training wheels on or off off yeah yeah he'll be he'll be doing it in two minutes that's another thing you can periscope i don't learn to ride just just run run behind him and hold the seat and then you let go that's how you do it
Marco:
Me and Tiff were doing that today earlier.
Marco:
This was the very first time we tried it, so we got slightly far, but we didn't quite get far enough today to fully let go for more than a second or two.
Marco:
I think we'll practice over the next few days, and probably by next week, he should be riding a bike.
John:
Actually, I was mostly joking.
John:
That's not how you should have your head do it.
John:
That's the way my father did it to me, but that's the worst way to do it.
John:
The way it should be done is the way you're already doing it.
John:
You give him the scoot bike so he learns how to balance, and he'll do it on his own.
John:
Yeah, so I think he's basically all set.
John:
If he just uses this like a scoot bike, but then picks both his feet up and puts them on the pedals instead of just holding them up in the air, then starts pedaling, he's off to the races.
John:
Yeah, we're getting there.
John:
This Budnitz bike is weird.
John:
Which one, the number three?
John:
Yeah.
John:
The frame is weird.
Marco:
Well, they're actually known for their like cool artistic frame.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't need my friend to be artistic.
John:
And it's not no CVT.
John:
You're going to be spoiled by the CVT.
John:
And then you're going to come to this and it's like 11 gears.
John:
That's not enough.
Marco:
Actually, I already asked them and they actually would do a CVT if I wanted it.
Marco:
But yeah.
Marco:
No, I mean, it's because it seems like it.
Marco:
What I actually want is a road version of a mountain bike.
John:
Yeah, that's what this looks like, except for the fruity frame.
Marco:
And so this gives me high-end parts.
Marco:
It has good brakes, good gearing options, the carbon belt, nice stuff, and a slightly...
Marco:
mountain bikey slightly roadie kind of hybrid riding position and wide tire support and it looks cool and oh and it also has the other things i like like minimal branding like so many of these bikes have just a giant names all over the place and it's just ugly as hell um so you know stuff like that like they do some pretty good work
John:
So the way you feel about sandbike tires is the way I feel about tires that are the width of this thing.
John:
I feel like it's just huge amounts of unnecessary friction.
John:
As soon as I stop pedaling, it's like, oh, these tires are slowing me down, like regenerative braking.
Marco:
The Model E actually is one of the more interesting e-bikes I've ever seen, too.
Marco:
It's all in the rear hub.
Marco:
like there's no battery on the frame or anything like it's just all it's just a rear hub that happens to include like a radial battery around the center there are things you see the thing you can add to just any bike and just slap it on the wheel there's lots of clever uh yeah the uh helvetica one what was that called the
Marco:
i think it's a bunch of them see something wheel anyway i honestly i thought that was hideous the thing you could just add to any of them yeah wow but no but again like if i get an e-bike it would definitely be for home not for here because that's the place where like there are giant hills in my neighborhood and one of the reasons i have not gotten a bike yet at home is that i assumed there's no there's no way to reasonably ride a bike in my neighborhood because there's so many hills
John:
There is.
John:
Come on.
John:
I should show you.
John:
I don't think any hill in your neighborhood is as big as hills near where I was growing up.
John:
And I went up them in a bike with no gears.
John:
Couldn't change gears down to first gear to get up the hill.
John:
You had one gear in the mongoose and that was it.
John:
And I powered my way up those hills all the time because that's how you got to your friend's house.
John:
One gear, both ways.
John:
Yeah, that's how you got to your friend's house.
John:
The worst part.
John:
It was more dangerous going down the hills.
John:
Did they have topology in Google Maps?
Marco:
sometimes it's weird let's see if i can find the other thing is like like as as my kid gets into biking i suspect that a good thing to do will be for me to go with him biking even at home year round so like to have something at home that could do that pretty well is probably a good idea no no nope no topology 3d 3d that's not very 3d the hell it's making it look like this road is flat this road is not flat
Marco:
Every time I see a mongoose around town, I think of you, John.
John:
No, it's a different company now.
Marco:
And they actually have what seems like a fairly popular fat tire bike, too.
Marco:
I'm not talking about the Budnest-sized tires.
Marco:
I'm talking about the sandbike-sized tires.
Marco:
I see a lot of the sandbikes around town are the ones that are kind of...
Marco:
There seems to be a class of bike around here that it's they're not quite wide enough or not knobby enough to be sand tires, but they're just ridiculous.
Marco:
They're like three and a half inch wide, but just like flat rubber tires on bikes that look like they might have cost two dollars out of the Walmart discount bin.
Marco:
It's very, very strange, but I kind of want to ride one.
John:
because it looks like it's probably a lot of fun oh my god i'm looking at these roads on google maps and i see that what the people did what these terrible people did to my childhood home because i can see it from the air they cut down all the trees they put this hideous swimming pool like taking up the entire backyard just giant hideous like literally the whole backyard is paved over with this terrible swimming pool in it i hate these people
Marco:
You know, that should be your retirement plan.
John:
Buy back your old house and fix it.
John:
It's not that great of a house.
John:
And I can't replace all the trees.
John:
They cut down so many trees, so many big full-grown trees.
John:
At least they still have them in the back, but just they cut down so many trees.
Marco:
Oh, you can.
Marco:
I mean, if you save enough money, you totally can buy full grown trees.
Marco:
I know because there's the guy Shaw, there's some guy named Shaw who like invented the hedge fund or something.
Marco:
And he's building a large house down, you know, basically at the edge of my neighborhood.
Marco:
They've actually trucked in full size trees.
Marco:
Have you ever seen a tree on a flatbed truck?
John:
That's what Apple did for the Apple Park thing.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
I would love to know how much it costs to get a full-size tree shipped to your house and planted.
Marco:
I'm guessing it has to be like $100,000 or something.
John:
Nah, maybe $5,000 a pop.
John:
All right, maybe $10,000 a pop.
Marco:
It's not on one regular flatbed.
Marco:
It's on the oversized load trucks they bring houses on.
John:
Yeah, they got the big spade.
John:
They got the big spade thing that's containing the root ball and all the dirt.
John:
Yeah, I know.
John:
Yeah, it's a giant root ball.
John:
I can't even imagine.
John:
Have you ever seen them take it out?
John:
It's like a thing from Half-Life 2 with City 17.
John:
These giant metal things go in and they all go underneath the thing and they all go down and meet in the middle and it tears up the tree.
John:
It's cool.
Marco:
yeah i didn't see that part but even just seeing the truck go down like the main thoroughfare in our town and park next to this giant construction project with this giant tree lying down on the back of it like that's wow so anyway you totally can replace this trace but maybe plan for like 100 grand each as the possible cost
John:
Oh, it's just such a shame.
John:
I mean, I don't understand why people, like, you don't want to have a backyard.
John:
You want your entire backyard to be brick in a swimming pool.
John:
It's just...
John:
and it's awkwardly shaped it's not the right place like it's a house on the corner and their swimming pool is like instead of being tucked away from where people are it's like right up against the driveway and the road like you want some privacy in your swimming pool it's just i don't know what they're thinking telling you this is what you got to do who knows what the inside of the house looks like now i mean maybe they didn't change that that much i don't know but they sell it and they ever have an open house i should go down there and look at what the heck they're doing
John:
oh totally no god you it will drive you insane knowing the things that they've done the only way that ends well for you is if you don't have any idea they haven't changed the outside of the house they've kept all the gross 80s deck and like the little abbreviated deck that my dad but maybe they maybe they fixed the walk when they did the driveway just just terrible don't like it