You Are Not a Datacenter
John:
Is someone trying to spell tukas and they're spelling it T-U-Q-U-A-S?
John:
It is not derived from Spanish.
John:
Tukas.
John:
So that is not the way to spell it.
John:
You are in the wrong region of the world for the origin of that.
Casey:
That's magnificent.
John:
I love Sean P. Walsh in the chat earlier.
John:
People who truck equals truckists.
John:
Somehow I missed that joke.
John:
That's people who are prejudiced against trucks.
John:
We already established that.
John:
Yes.
John:
Like me with the stupid Jeep Cherokee.
John:
Would you stop with that?
John:
It's so ridiculous.
John:
It's the worst thing ever.
Casey:
Didn't I tell this story on Neutral?
Casey:
It's December in Connecticut.
Casey:
And for those who are not aware, Connecticut doesn't believe in salting the roads.
Casey:
They believe in sanding the roads.
Casey:
So the entire state is just one big sandbox.
Casey:
It's December.
Casey:
It's Connecticut.
Casey:
And there's sand everywhere.
Casey:
And we're at a T. So we have to make either a left or a right.
Casey:
It's my friend's SRT8 Grand Cherokee.
Casey:
And similarly to the Eclipse Turbo that we were talking about earlier, he looks over and says, are you holding on?
Casey:
I'm like, what the fuck?
John:
are you talking about we're about to do a 90 degree turn why would i need to hold on i was like yeah okay sure next thing i know he stands on the gas and we make this 90 degree turn like we were getting shot out of a cannon it was the most amazing thing in the world no no fast car fine but like it's like let's make something that is not designed to go fast but let's make it go fast and there's no that's the beauty there's a perverse thing in that but but in the end it's an abomination it's just like let's take a chihuahua but make it a pack animal
John:
Like, we'll have it carry all our suitcases down to the Grand Canyon.
John:
And if you could do that, it's like, wow, that's the world's strongest chihuahua.
John:
But like, that is the wrong tool for the job.
Casey:
That is a terrible analogy.
Casey:
I am disappointed.
Casey:
You are usually so good at coming up with decent analogies in a way that I am terrible.
John:
It was reversed because I'm taking the small thing and making it big.
John:
But it's like making a hippo dance.
John:
Like, that's what you're trying to do.
John:
And it's just like, why would you do that?
John:
There's perfectly good cars that are not big, tall, tippy, gross things made to go off-road.
John:
They want to go fast.
John:
The Jeep Cherokee doesn't want to go fast.
John:
What are you doing?
John:
I love it when they lower it.
John:
They take a car with a good ground clearance and then you lower it.
John:
What are you even doing?
John:
Why?
John:
You're just ruining a car.
Casey:
No, it's Porque No Lostos.
Casey:
Why can't you have both?
Casey:
Why can't you have this convenient car?
John:
Because you can't.
John:
Because the thing is like 17 feet high and rolls over.
John:
You can't.
Casey:
No, it doesn't.
Casey:
I just explained to you.
Casey:
We did a 90 degree turn at like 30.
John:
You can lower it as much as you want.
John:
The center of gravity of that car is not the same as the center of gravity of a sports car that's down low.
Casey:
So if somebody offered you a Porsche – it's not the Cayman.
Casey:
The Cayenne.
Casey:
The Cayenne Turbo.
John:
And the McCann is the even bigger one.
John:
I would sell it and use that money to probably not buy a better car.
John:
But if I was forced to – if I was forced, I said you have to get a car, I would immediately sell it and I would use that money to buy –
John:
The million other cars that I'd rather have.
Casey:
Why do you hate fun, John?
Casey:
Why do you hate fun and nice things?
John:
What's your next suggestion?
John:
A monster truck Ferrari?
John:
Why can't I have both?
John:
Look, it's like a Ferrari, but also you can crush cars with it.
John:
No, now it's bad.
John:
What have you done?
John:
And a monster truck Ferrari would still look cooler than that Jeep.
John:
It would still look cooler.
Casey:
I hate you so much, and yet I don't.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
So we should get this show started.
Casey:
And as per usual, we have to start with some follow-up.
Casey:
And, you know, here's the thing, you guys.
Casey:
We've been doing this show for, what, almost three and a half years now?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Because it was 2013, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
And, you know, I knew both of you guys pretty well when we started.
Casey:
I knew Marco a little bit better, but I knew both of you guys pretty well.
Casey:
But had you told me in 2013, yeah, you know, you're still going to be doing this in 2017, I'd probably been like, eh.
Casey:
That's surprising, but okay, I'll believe it.
Casey:
If you had told me in 2013, well, you will have multiple episodes of follow-up about Marco's hindquarters, I'm not sure I would have believed that one.
John:
He's got a horse.
John:
I don't know if he has hindquarters.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Marco's tushy.
John:
I was going to go with Tuchus.
Casey:
Oh, Tuchus is a great one.
John:
We keep riffing on all the different... His posterior, his derriere, his fanny, but fanny means something different in the UK, so...
Casey:
You really did grow up in a mixed environment, if you know tuchus.
Casey:
I'm very proud of you, John.
John:
Tuchus is derived from that, I think.
John:
It's all just, you know.
Casey:
Well, anyway, so let's talk about Marco's tuchus.
Casey:
Why don't you tell me about whether cushion saddles are good or bad?
Casey:
And I don't know if I'm talking to Marco or John, but whoever put this in the show.
Casey:
I'm talking to me.
John:
So this is from Ahmad al-Hashimi, who says, Cushion saddles are bad.
John:
You can tell it's a bike person when they say saddles, because regular people call them seats.
John:
But bikus, as Mark say, Mark.
John:
it's marco whatever that guy's name is they're good dogs mark um they're saddles anyway uh he says when you sit on a large cushion seat the cushioning material ensures pressure is placed over the entire region it goes into the nooks and crannies between your thighs and finds all the sensitive areas to ensure maximum pressure yeah what do you want instead and this was repeat this was repeated by many many yeah
John:
This is repeated by many people who sent in feedback.
John:
I just picked this one as representative.
John:
What you want instead is contact at your sit bones and nothing else.
John:
Did you know you have sit bones?
John:
If you read the dozens of emails that talk about sit bones that were sent to our show, you would know.
Marco:
Yeah, I thought this was a term that the first person was making up, but then we got multiple people telling us about sit bones.
Marco:
Apparently, I mean, I haven't done any more medical research on this topic, but multiple people seem to think these are real things.
John:
yeah and so he says with some honesty soreness at the contact areas ideally the sit bones is to be expected for the new cyclist by the way many people wrote in to tell marco that it's not bikest as if he didn't know that anyway sometimes it's hard to tell if marco was joking i myself have difficulty sometime but uh rest assured he knows bikest is a bad joke um
John:
He likens it to the soreness in your feet when you first start using a standing desk.
John:
Numbness is a much more ominous sign.
John:
It means pressure is being placed on the wrong spots, cutting off blood supply or pressing on nerves.
John:
So the consensus seems to be padding aside, what you want is most of your weight to be on the sit bones and not sort of
John:
distributed across all the different parts because then no matter how you sit it's like squishing all your soft tissues together and cutting off blood flow whereas apparently i'm guessing there's a path from the sit bones to you know it's kind of like jacking a car put it that way when you jack up a car you put it on the jack points you don't just take the jack and put it in any soft squishy part underneath your car and start cranking it because bad things will happen so anyway i debated even putting this in here but i feel like this is good information for other people who are
John:
getting into bikes or not into bikes and are wondering about bike seat stuff the there was very loud consensus that it's all about you and your sit bones and then making good contact and that not having pressure on other places so there you go thank you for all the bikers for your feedback about my james demore
John:
It sounds like they're prejudiced against bikes.
John:
They're bikists.
Casey:
Nice.
Casey:
Speaking of jacking up cars, it always drove me nuts because anytime I wanted to jack up, I think it was the Subaru.
Casey:
I don't think it was the BMW.
Casey:
The official jack point for the rear of the car was to jack up by the rear differential, which just seems like a terrible idea to me.
Casey:
They were like, yeah, just put it under the rear pumpkin and go to town.
Casey:
You'll be fine.
Casey:
It just seems bananas.
John:
It's probably a pretty strong part of the car.
John:
I mean, presumably they know what they're talking about.
John:
They made the car.
John:
They're not going to, you know.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
One would think, but it just struck me as wrong.
Casey:
Anyway, Mo Rubensall wants to talk about Backblaze backup limits and also wants to know, how do folks back up their applications folder?
Casey:
Because Backblaze exempts it and restructuring it would be hell.
Casey:
I don't.
Casey:
Or at least I don't think I would want to because if I wanted to back everything up in my applications folder, I would rather just recreate it by hand because I don't think I want any of the stuff in there.
Casey:
In fact, one of my favorite blog posts that I wrote, which is mostly for myself as kind of a long-term memory, but it's talking about here's all the things I would install when reinstalling a new Mac or starting a new Mac.
Casey:
So I used that for the MacBook Adorable.
Casey:
I used it for the 5K iMac.
Casey:
I don't use Migration Assistant, generally speaking, because even though it's unlike the Windows when I was using Windows, and this is probably Marco's era as well, that you had to reinstall everything.
Casey:
We had to just destroy everything and start anew every six months to clear out all the cruft that just magically appears.
Casey:
You know, macOS is not like that.
Casey:
But when I get a new machine, it's time.
Marco:
Yeah, I also don't ever back up my applications folder unless it's from automatically doing it from things like Time Machine or a disk clone.
Marco:
I think the main advantage to backing up your applications folder is if you're literally just cloning your entire disk and if you want fast recovery after a disaster.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And there is definitely a role for that.
Marco:
One of your backup methods should be a straight-up copy of your entire disk because then if you do have a disk failure, you can restore that onto a new disk or a new computer very quickly compared to downloading things off of an internet backup.
Marco:
An internet backup is like a last resort because it is slower.
Marco:
It goes over the internet.
Marco:
You might have limited upstream, so you might not want to upload every single thing you have on your disk if you can easily get it through other means.
Marco:
So there is definitely a role for including applications folders in backups, but I totally see why it's not included in Backblaze as cloud backup by default.
Marco:
Again, we should disclose that Backblaze is a frequent sponsor of our show.
Marco:
So I'm saying this partly to defend them, but also not because they are paying us sometimes, but simply because I think that it makes sense to exclude that for a cloud backup because the purpose of a cloud backup is like last resort.
Marco:
And applications folders are really easy to reconstruct with just time.
Marco:
You're not permanently losing data there.
Marco:
You're just losing some time to redownload applications, reinstall applications and everything.
Marco:
But yeah, for a full disk copy method like time machine or super duper carbon copy clone or things like that, any kind of disk cloning method, it makes sense to include that just for speed of recovery.
John:
So we talked about this a long time ago, one of our earlier shows about backups.
John:
I think it was when we all just started using Backblaze.
John:
Actually, even before maybe they sponsored the show.
John:
It was.
John:
I was discussing the fact that Backblaze excludes a lot of stuff.
John:
And they have a hard-coded... They have a thing where you can say what you want to exclude, but they have a hard-coded exclude list.
John:
And it excluded stuff that I wanted backed up.
John:
So at that time, I hacked up whatever XML file they had buried somewhere in the...
John:
slash library folder, not the home directory run, but the one at the top level of the disk.
John:
There was some XML file somewhere that you could mess with to make it back up things that are in the quote unquote hard coded exclude list.
John:
And I think that technique still works.
John:
And it's just as unsupported and dangerous and do it your own risk.
John:
But it is a thing that I do frequently that file moves around and changes or whatever.
John:
But I'm pretty sure it's still working for me.
John:
Um, so basically you can make back ways, backup stuff that it says it doesn't want to back up if you're willing to live a little dangerously.
John:
Um, but like Mark said, you, like you should just be losing time because applications, like it's annoying, but none of your data is there.
John:
You didn't write those applications.
John:
Right.
John:
And, um,
John:
these days the chances are very good that you have some reasonably convenient way to get those applications back the company you bought it from has some record that you bought it they can let you re-download it even if it came on plastic discs i'm hoping you're saving those plastic discs somewhere and if you're not saving them i'm hoping you can contact the vendor that you bought it from and say hey my house burned down i lost my plastic discs and i get the software back but realistically speaking most applications you're going to want to launch these days you have to be able to download them somewhere and if you can download them there's probably some record on their servers about the fact that you own it so
John:
um it may be annoying but like marco said like if you find yourself restoring from an internet backup many many things have gone wrong and you're probably just so happy that you have your precious data preserved in any form that you're not you know you're going to be spending like days and days possibly weeks restoring anyway so don't worry about it but yeah but i but i because it's unlimited backups i'm like you you know what go ahead back up my applications folder why not
Casey:
So CrashPlan does have a native client for Macs.
Casey:
Maybe?
Casey:
So we've gotten a lot of feedback saying that the Enterprise CrashPlan client is actually native.
Casey:
And if you recall, one of the things that really drives me freaking bananas about CrashPlan as a consumer...
Casey:
is that it's a Java-based cross-platform utter garbage app.
Casey:
I guess saying Java-based and utter garbage is redundant, but here we are.
Casey:
That joke will never stop being funny.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
And we got zero negative feedback on it.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I'm surprised.
Casey:
So anyway, so...
Casey:
So there's been a lot of people coming to us saying, hey, the Enterprise client is actually native.
Casey:
So it may not be so bad once you do the migration, except maybe not.
Casey:
So Phil Stollery wrote in to say to us that he just upgraded to CrashPlan for small business, which, to be fair, is not necessarily the same as Enterprise.
Casey:
And he said it's the same crappy Java app.
Casey:
And he said that he was only allowed to use version 4.9, which I guess is still Java, not the Enterprise version, which is 6.x.
Casey:
So tread carefully.
Casey:
I still haven't taken any action on my backup strategy yet because I'm procrastinating and sticking my head in the sand like an ostrich trying to pretend that it's not an issue.
Casey:
But be wary that things may not be all roses and daffodils in the crash plan for small business category.
John:
i'm wondering how you can get if it's possible to get that native version even if you're a small business customer but i've been running the java version forever like i said it's not like it doesn't bother me i don't see the application i just see the icon in the menu bar it's probably using a lot more memory and cpu than i want but it has pretty good controls about you can tell it don't even start doing a backup unless the machine has been idle for a certain period of time you can always stop it if it's in the
John:
honestly with a with a big mac with lots of ram and an ssd you just don't notice it running even though it's a bloated java application and you know it's probably doing ridiculous things and if you bring up activity monitor you may get sad about it but
John:
Uh, you know, you can always pause it and tell it not to run now and then just do your stuff and then let it run when you're away where you don't have to see what it's doing to your computer.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
Uh, speaking of crash plan, there is a five terabyte migration limit, which I was not aware of.
Casey:
So this is a crash plan support article entitled migrate your crash plan for home account to crash plan for small business.
Casey:
It's dated a little over a week ago.
Casey:
And it says that, hey, your backup, do my backups continue automatically?
Casey:
And the backup type, cloud backups to CrashPlan Central, CrashPlan Central being their cloud offering.
Casey:
Does it continue?
Casey:
Yes, except very large backups over five terabytes.
Casey:
And just seconds ago, I took a look to see how big my latest backup was to CrashPlan Central.
Casey:
Would anyone like to guess how big it was?
Casey:
5.1.
Casey:
5.3 terabytes.
John:
Woo!
John:
I'm just under 5.
John:
I'm like 4.8 or something, so I'm happy.
John:
I've already done this conversion.
John:
It already updated my client.
John:
It updated my client to the... It's still the Java client, but the color scheme is different.
John:
I'm pretty sure that's the only change.
Casey:
Oh, interesting.
John:
So I'm running 4.9 or whatever.
John:
But yeah, it just continued my backups.
Casey:
oh man that's that's i'm jealous because apparently i'm so it's not that i can't use uh this new home and business or small business thing but apparently i'm gonna have to re-upload everything all right you should contact them and say very large backups over five terabytes well i'm a little bit over like how how you know can't you just you know grandfather me in i'm close like i don't know
Casey:
Yeah, something like that.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm sad.
Casey:
I need to take action on this.
Casey:
I just, I really don't want to.
Casey:
I just want it to go away.
Casey:
And ignoring it does not make it go away, but I wish it did.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So ARQ versus Backblaze versus CrashPlan on saving Mac metadata.
Casey:
So this is something I've never paid attention to because I don't really care enough, even though I probably should.
Casey:
So as the person who is most likely to care about this, John, why don't you tell me about what's going on here?
John:
This was a larger story like maybe two years ago.
John:
I think back when Backblaze was starting to come to prominence and Arc was a lot newer than it is now.
John:
And one of Arc's big selling points was, hey, we back up all your Mac metadata, like every little bit of it, all the labels and the dates and the comment field and like every little weird bit, the finder flags and all the other stuff.
John:
we back it all up and there's another program i'm not sure if it's associated with arc if it's written by the same guy or if it's totally independent but called backup bouncer that was trying to say um
John:
if you make a backup and restore the backup, is it exactly like it was before, down to the bit, down to every single piece of metadata, right?
John:
And you could care more or less about different things.
John:
At various times, people who use, like, labels, like macOS's labels, where you can label your items in the Finder with different colors and give the colors names and stuff like that, if you use that extensively or tags, you know, which is the expansion of labels, like, if you use that stuff
John:
extensively and you do a backup but like that's how you organize your files right and you do a backup and you restore and all that stuff is gone that is essentially data loss for you so you care a lot about that that metadata backup bouncer is you know down to the bit thing i remember like super duper would fail on backup bouncer because it didn't restore permissions on things that it didn't have the the rights to restore like it changed the ownership or changed some you know like
John:
It's very picky about exactly what you want to have.
John:
But the general line from these companies about why their products don't do well on backup bouncer is like, well, we are not a bit for bit imaging system.
John:
We are a data backup solution.
John:
So you're not going to get your disk back bit for bit exactly how it was.
John:
You're just going to get your data back.
John:
crash plan reportedly backs up metadata better than backblaze backblaze drops almost all of it on the floor and just backs up your data crash plan does better arc is apparently 100 like it'll get every single little bit because that's you know that's it's the uh bespoke artisanal handcrafted backup program just for mac users and a lot of people ask me how i feel about that since i love all my metadata and everything well
John:
One of the reasons I don't use labels and tags, A, is because I know how they're implemented and it's gross.
John:
But B, I fear how that stuff will survive.
John:
So I wouldn't want to rely on it and then have it get lost in some kind of backup thing.
John:
And like we said before, online backup is absolutely the last resort.
John:
So it being the lowest fidelity backup I have, SuperDuper being the highest fidelity, where it's pretty much exactly bit for bit the disk that I had, Time Machine kind of being in the middle, and then Backblaze being the lowest fidelity.
John:
I'm okay with that, right?
John:
There's trade-offs.
John:
You're paying $5 a month to store some obscene amount of memory on someone else's server.
John:
You know, I understand, again, if I find myself restoring from that, so many things have gone wrong that I just accept that, you know, every little bit of metadata won't be there.
John:
But because of that, I also don't use the metadata for any... It's not an essential part of my workflow for organizing my files just because so many things, not just backup software, but so many things are not...
John:
It won't honor and copy that metadata.
John:
Apple's own CP commands and MV commands and stuff will, for the most part, honor it, but lots of other tools, like even if you install a third-party build of rsync and haven't compiled it with the right options that might not bring your extended attributes over unless you don't pass the right flags and stuff.
John:
I just can't rely on myself to be careful to preserve that stuff, so I never put in anything I really care about.
John:
in metadata like that which is sad because i wish it was pervasive and supported everywhere but the lowest common denominator which is a mathematically incorrect expression but you all know what i mean is so much lower than what it is on the mac so the the common set of metadata that you can be confident is going to survive everywhere is higher than it has ever been but still way lower than what mac os supports so backup uh programs
John:
being on that lower end i just accept as another sad reality just like final name extensions sorry john someday we'll get there someday we'll find it the rainbow connection that went right over my head i know i've heard it before i think it's a beatles lyric have you yeah close close marco
John:
Have you shown Adam the Muppet movie?
John:
Oh, there we go.
John:
No.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's a little bit slow paced for kids because it's like a 70s movie and movies were slower back then, but still got some good songs.
Casey:
You know what I loved?
Casey:
Charles Bronson was in like The Great Muppet Caper or something like that.
Casey:
It was another Muppets movie.
Casey:
I forget what the official title was, but...
Casey:
I remember loving that as a kid and like many years ago I watched it with Aaron as an adult and I was like, oh, this movie is not that good.
John:
The original Mamba movie though is very sweet and has good songs in it and has good production values and Kermit rides a bicycle so Marco can watch it and feel some kinship.
John:
What kind of saddle does he use?
John:
Yeah, it's hard to tell.
John:
Is he properly fit on his sit bones?
John:
I don't know if frogs have sit bones.
John:
I'm still not sure if people have sit bones.
John:
Technically, he's got someone's hand up his butt.
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
Through the magic of special effects, he's riding a bike.
John:
It's pretty cool.
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, so let's talk about a lot of people have written in with a lot of anger about Backblaze's 30-day retention policy.
Casey:
So this is something that I could not possibly care less about, but there's a lot of very grumpy people about it.
Casey:
So if I understand things right,
Casey:
Backblaze has said if you have a, say, external hard drive that is physically connected to your computer and thus qualifies for Backblaze backups, if you don't plug it in every 30 days, then they will delete those backups.
Casey:
So let's say, you know, I have an external hard drive that has a bunch of pictures on it.
Casey:
If I don't plug it in at least once a month, at the end of a month, if I haven't plugged it in, Backblaze will delete all those files.
Casey:
And there's a lot of people that are really, really grumpy about this that have written us and are like, why aren't you talking about this?
Casey:
How can you let this stand?
Casey:
I just don't care.
Casey:
I don't understand why people think it's acceptable for Backblaze to hold on to this data in perpetuity just because they're paying them $5 a month or whatever it is.
John:
crash plan does it for ten dollars a month i mean it all comes down to the business model yeah backblaze the corporate no for ten dollars is the new plan that they are doing oh yeah uh so backblaze has been on twitter talking to people and they say like oh we consider revisiting this policy blah blah but yeah it just comes down to the economics if uh this is a way for backblaze to make it so they don't lose money and cancel this plan uh because you can imagine just hooking up every hard drive you have and pushing it up and then just never reconnecting it i'd do it because i keep most of my hard drives unmounted
John:
um and occasionally backblaze yells at me and tells me i haven't mounted one in a while and i just mounted and it's fine like it sends you a reminder you're not gonna not know that it's happening but if backblaze wanted to like revisit this what they would have to do is say you can store as much as you want but now we're gonna have to charge you
John:
on some sort of usage basis maybe there's a flat fee up to a certain size but once you get beyond that you have to pay an additional x number of dollars for a different you know you know what i mean like it doesn't have to be exactly a la carte you pay for every bite like s3 it can still be the insurance model where everybody pays the same amount and most people do very little but a few people do a lot and it all evens out like that's their business model
John:
to support your ability to just hook up a hard drive, a two terabyte hard drive once, let it back up over the course of the week and then file it away in a shelf, confident that those two terabytes will be there forever.
John:
Backlays will store those two terabytes for you.
John:
No problem.
John:
You just got to give them enough money to make it worth their while.
John:
And how much more do you have to give it than $5 a month?
John:
i don't know they can figure out how the math works but for all the people asking for that feature it's going to cost you more money and i think those people will be willing to cost more money so i think backblaze should come up with a plan that has slightly different policies that is priced slightly differently and for its extreme users they would use that they would get more money out of the extreme users and i think they would just have happy customers overall because most people don't care about this but the people who do as we noted are you know very very worked up about it so
Marco:
backblaze uh you're leaving money on the table go take take some money from the people who want their stuff to be stored forever i think one of the main roots of that anger is like you know when you know backblaze advertises unlimited and unlimited in computers is never really unlimited and there's there's always exceptions to that uh because it's impossible to build a business on being truly unlimited um and
Marco:
you know usually like the it's easy to understand business models that don't claim to be unlimited and just show you their pricing and their limits right up front and so i think the people who are angry about that are probably angry because they expect truly unlimited because that's how it's advertised um and this is an exception to that but you know that's again like that's you know i think you put it well like that's why they're able to stay in business is because of limitations like that that are i think pretty reasonable limitations
John:
Yeah, like I said, it's not a secret.
John:
They're going to pop dialogues in your faces.
John:
I think they popped the first dialogue box in like 10 days or 14 days.
John:
Like, hey, I haven't seen this book, this disc in 10 days.
John:
Perhaps you want to plug it back in.
John:
Like they're not secretly trying to delete all your data, but this is where the economics work for $5.
John:
You can really start as much as you want for $5, but you can't like briefly connect a hard drive to your computer.
John:
Like have your friends come and bring their hard drives, hook them up to your computer, let them back up and then take their hard drive back to their house and never visit it again.
John:
Now you have a permanent backup of their stuff just in case they lose it.
John:
Like, that's the model they're trying to avoid.
John:
People just, you know, using it as a way station to drop off a couple terabytes, right?
John:
That's not sustainable for $5 a month flat fee.
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So a lot of other people have written in and said, hey...
Casey:
I don't know if you guys were aware, but you all have Synology's, and Synology does have a peer-to-peer backup system strategy, etc.
Casey:
Why don't you do that?
Casey:
And I will be the bad guy and say, I don't want to share my space with you two jerks, and it's mine, and I don't want to share.
Casey:
And I...
Casey:
I would probably, if either of you asked me, be willing to offer up what I could.
Casey:
But last I heard, John, you said last episode or the one before that you're bursting.
John:
There's no room in the inn.
John:
I don't have a square to spare.
John:
Insert your own reference here.
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
So John doesn't have any excess space to offer.
Casey:
And thus, if you don't have any excess space, I won't have enough to offer you a backup.
Casey:
Marco and I maybe could set this up, but I don't know.
Casey:
I feel like this is the sort of thing where I should be paying a company to handle this for me, which is what I will probably end up doing.
Casey:
And I don't feel comfortable asking even you guys, who I think would probably say, you know, all things being equal, would probably say, yeah, sure, you can back up to mysology.
Casey:
I don't feel comfortable talking to you guys about it, let alone, you know, anyone else I might know.
Casey:
So I don't really view this as a reasonable option for me, but maybe I'm just being a big baby.
John:
yeah i don't it's not a reasonable option for most people and i wouldn't say yes because i don't want the responsibility of holding your data like the whole point of of cloud backup is i want it to be far away from my house so if the house burns down it's okay and i want it to be someplace where it's somebody's job to make sure my data is actually there a lot of people do this where they do a hard drive and and back it up and put it at a relative's house that is better than nothing i'm not going to discourage you from doing that but
John:
In that situation, and I've been in it many times, what always happens is you forget to keep bringing the hard drive back and forth because it's a pain.
John:
And if it's network-based, it's like, oh, you don't have to do that.
John:
It's all magic over the network.
John:
Is the person at the other end invested in making sure that your backup continues to be successful and that the hard drive that's doing it isn't filling up or doesn't have some bad sectors and stuff like that?
John:
It's not their job.
John:
and they don't want to be responsible for that and if something goes wrong now you're mad at like a friend or a relative and there have been like products on kickstarter and stuff to try to do with strangers like we'll all share our data and it'll be a big distributed p2p cloud like so far that hasn't worked out it's a good it's a good idea if i think if space was cheaper and bandwidth was more it would work out but right now i hardly recommend sending your data to some company whose job it is to make sure your data is safe doesn't mean the company is going to be perfect either but
John:
a if the company screws things up you can feel fine about being mad at the company b you can sue the company maybe probably not because of their user agreement but anyway like you can get as mad as you want about them they have deep pockets so if you want some sort of recourse you can get it you would never want to be in this relationship with a relative or a friend where through some faults that you will argue about your your backup your off-site backup is uh corrupt or unreal or not there or something goes wrong or whatever and
John:
And then people being bitter about the hard drive space you're using that they want to reclaim that to put like more of their Ritz Blu-rays on.
John:
It's just, it is not a relationship you want to be in.
John:
I do not recommend this, even though there's lots of good software for it that makes it easy.
John:
But like I said, all that said, if that's your only option, like if that's the only thing you can do, whether it's carrying hard drives back and forth in a car or having your two synologies to talk to each other, it is better than nothing.
John:
But I really recommend making a company do it.
Casey:
You know, I think I would almost feel, not even almost, I think I would probably feel more comfortable saying to one of you guys, I am shipping a Synology to your house.
Casey:
A second Synology.
John:
I don't want to run your Synology.
John:
I don't want to run your hardware in my house.
John:
It's hard enough to run my own stuff.
John:
My kid's going to spill peanut butter on it.
John:
My basement's going to flood.
John:
The mice are going to poop in it.
John:
It's just no.
Casey:
I totally understand that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I also I don't want the responsibility.
Marco:
You know, like it's it's much less about, you know, the about the physical having the hardware or having the space or the money required to run and power it.
Marco:
Like it's more about I don't want you to depend on this box in my house connected, you know, in my garage that's probably overheating itself slowly.
Marco:
Like I don't need like I don't need the stress of that.
Marco:
and that like and i don't i would hate to be in a position where your stuff went bad and you were depending on me and this thing being perfectly operating in my house to fix that and and talk about like you know that's fine for the three of us like most people don't have friends with giant nas boxes in their garages like this is not a generalizable solution it barely would even work for us and
Marco:
And we have giant NAS boxes with giant hard drives and fast internet connections.
Marco:
And we're all friends.
Marco:
Most people don't have that kind of setup.
Marco:
And even the ones like us who do probably shouldn't do that if we have other options.
John:
I think it's safer to lend people money.
John:
than to store their backups because if you give people money, you can just say, this is just a gift.
John:
You never have to pay me back.
John:
Here it is.
John:
We're friends.
John:
Whereas the data, it's like, you're keeping this safe for me, right?
John:
It's easier to keep people's children safe than their data because you forget the stupid hard drive is there.
John:
You forget if it's still running.
John:
You forget if things are going bad.
John:
The person on the other end doesn't know that their thing is failing because you have some... It's just...
John:
it's not you are not a data center you don't have a climate control thing with aisles and aisles of racked computers you know like you just you don't have that you don't have redundant power backups you don't just you're not in the business of being a backup thing so it's just it's going to be sad all around because if something goes wrong then you know what do you do you just sit there and try not to blame each other but then you do feel bad about it like
John:
I feel like it's a much better feeling for you to back up stuff to Backblaze and then all your data goes corrupt on Backblaze at the last moment.
John:
Then you just be righteously mad at Backblaze.
John:
Being mad at cooperation is what Americans are best at.
John:
We don't want to ruin your relationships.
John:
I'm never flying Delta again.
John:
You can do that all you want and be fine.
John:
You don't want to sacrifice your personal relationships, but you'll keep you vibrant and extend your life according to all the studies.
Casey:
Yeah, it's funny you bring that up because the unfortunately named Pahish Food in the chat said backing up each other's storage is like lending money.
Casey:
Don't do it with your friends.
Casey:
Do it with a business.
Casey:
And I agree with that.
John:
Like I said, I think lending money is better because you can say it's a yeah, it's better than backing up because lending money, you can lend it and say, oh, well, I'm pretending this is loan.
John:
But in my heart of hearts, I'm realizing this is a gift and just say, I never expect to see this money back and I'll be fine with it because it's a nice thing to do.
John:
There's no ongoing relationship where you're like maintaining that money for the person or anything.
John:
it'd be more like if they gave you instead of putting their money into savings they gave it the money to you to invest that would be the kind of responsibility you're getting for data it's like and then they come back and say how's how's all that money i gave you how's that investment going you're like yeah yeah it's it's going it's going okay and then they get mad at you why didn't you do a better job of investing my money it's like just why didn't you not make me do this no
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And I mean, to be clear, I agree with you that lending money to a friend is maybe not the best thing in the world, but it is way better than being a backup strategy.
Casey:
So to hopefully come to the end of this, there's only a couple more things about backups.
Casey:
John, tell me about Synology C2 backups.
John:
This is still in beta, and it is apparently a Synology thing.
John:
I think it's only in Germany, too, so it's not really relevant to us.
John:
But Synology has their own.
John:
Everyone wants to riff on S3.
John:
You've got B2, and now you've got C2.
John:
We're running out of letters and number combos here.
John:
Your Synology will do a backup of itself to Synology's own cloud storage.
John:
Are they just reselling S3?
John:
I have no idea.
John:
But anyway, if everyone wanted to know, that's a thing.
John:
We'll put the link in the show notes if you have a Synology and you're interested in looking at the C2 beta, especially if you live near Frankfurt, Germany, or wherever the hell this is.
John:
Check it out.
Casey:
Yeah, it's expensive, though.
John:
Maybe they are reselling S3.
Casey:
It's 70 euros per terabyte per year.
Casey:
So that's $83-ish, according to DuckDuckGo, per terabyte.
Casey:
And if I have five, that's $415 a year for me.
Casey:
That is not inexpensive.
Marco:
Yeah, I think Backblaze B2 is still probably the cheapest option I know of for actual pay per gig, but otherwise unlimited in usage as long as you pay for it kind of thing.
Marco:
I don't know of anything cheaper than B2 yet, but I'm happy to hear suggestions.
Yeah.
Casey:
Additionally, friend of the show, Dan Morin, has written a post for Macworld, which is apparently still a thing, saying, why the Mac needs iCloud backup.
Casey:
So why not, I guess, right?
Casey:
I mean, iCloud is foolproof and definitely is a justifiable use, is backing up all of your data that you cannot possibly lose.
Casey:
Why wouldn't that work?
John:
It's backing up a lot of data.
John:
A lot of iOS devices are backed up like that.
John:
Only Apple knows for sure how many of them.
John:
I mean, you get some amount of iCloud backup stuff.
John:
I forget.
John:
It's some obscenely small amount that you get free.
John:
Five gigs?
Casey:
I think it's five gigs, yeah.
John:
Right.
John:
But anyway, and you could pay for more.
John:
But the Mac just doesn't have that.
John:
And this is just another of those cases where the Mac doesn't have a feature that iOS has had for years and years.
John:
uh and a lot of people asked about like when is when is apple going to do iCloud backup for the mac it seems inevitable if they eventually get around to it because they already do iCloud backups it's not a new business they would do the same model of giving you a useless amount of storage for free uh and then you pay for more and i bet people would use it because why shouldn't apple be in the cloud backup business for all this device it's basically an
John:
the cloud backup business for all of its devices minus a rounding error, which we call the Mac these days.
John:
So I hope Apple does do that because, I mean, first of all, what choice do we have for cloud backups on the phone?
John:
It's not like we can use Backblazer crash plan on our phone.
John:
We all do iCloud backups, even if we also do iTunes backups.
John:
And for the most part, it seems to sort of work and it's certainly better than nothing.
John:
So Apple should do that eventually.
Marco:
You can make jokes about how bad Apple services have been so far in the past and everything like that, but I think iCloud backup is pretty solid.
Marco:
Most of their recent services are pretty solid.
Marco:
Some of their intelligence-based things, like Siri and things like that, could use some work, but
Marco:
the stuff that's about just storing your data responsibly and syncing it and everything, that stuff has been pretty solid for a while now.
Marco:
So I am totally fine with the idea of Apple offering this.
Marco:
And it's one of those things, it's similar to when they launched Time Machine, there was a lot of criticism about various limitations or requirements Time Machine had, but like
Marco:
The one thing you can always say in defense of moves like this is, well, it's better than people who use nothing at all.
Marco:
Like, it's better than nothing, right?
Marco:
And so with iOS devices backing up to iCloud, like, you know, that's another situation where, like, it's better than not having even the five gigs they give you is better than nothing.
Marco:
It'd be nice to have more by default because it would be nice to have a reasonable amount for all iPhones sold that just came with the price of the iPhone.
Marco:
I think that would be a wonderful thing for Apple to do.
Marco:
I'm not holding my breath on that, but I wish they would do things like that.
Marco:
Having any backup is better than having no backup.
Marco:
This would be the kind of thing where not every Mac owner would or should use an iCloud backup service if it were offered on the Mac, but
Marco:
it would be a really easy, fast way to get lots of Mac users to have a backup who otherwise would have had nothing at all.
Marco:
And that's good that you want that.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
That's audible.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thanks to Audible for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so that's the end of the follow-up, and we should move on to Ask ATP.
John:
Oh, no, no.
Casey:
What do you mean no?
John:
One more item.
John:
Quickie for you.
Casey:
Oh, no, there's nothing else.
Marco:
I believe there is.
Marco:
So, Casey, I heard that you might have had a keyboard flaw on your new MacBook Adorable that has this wonderful keyboard that everyone loves so much that definitely doesn't have constant flaws for almost everybody.
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
That's fake news.
Marco:
Oh, okay.
Casey:
Just wanted to make sure.
Casey:
Yeah, so my beloved MacBook Adorable apparently got an infinitesimally small piece of dust under the numeral 4 key.
Casey:
And because of that, it was mushy for days until I finally had the time to go to Target and buy myself compressed air, which is something I haven't bought in probably five, maybe ten years.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And then take the compressed air to my MacBook and blow out the infinitesimally small piece of dust.
Casey:
And then subsequent to that, it took me a few hours to realize I had not really removed the dust, but simply relocated it to under the caps lock key, which I don't generally use, but I happened to use a few hours later and was like, oh...
Casey:
Well, that's mushy and gross.
Casey:
I guess I know where that dust went.
Casey:
And then I had to take the compressed air again to the caps lock key in order to blow it out again.
Casey:
And now I think my keyboard is fully functioning once more.
Casey:
But yeah, very frustrating because the difference between the regularly functioning keys and a key that has just an iota of dust under it is night and day.
Casey:
It is disgusting to use a key that has dust under it because it feels mushy and gross and terrible.
Casey:
So I still love my MacBook Adorable.
Casey:
I still do recommend it, especially as like an accessory Mac.
Casey:
But the tolerance for dust and debris on this thing is approaching zero, which is really unfortunate.
John:
It's like the opposite of that Panasonic Toughbook.
John:
Remember that?
Casey:
Oh, yeah, I do.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, I do.
John:
The laptop.
John:
Yeah, the laptop meant to work in all sorts of environments.
John:
Maybe you should get one of those like glass boxes with the little holes with the gloves in them that the scientists use when they're working with hazardous materials.
John:
Just put the MacBook Adorable inside the box.
John:
And when you want to use it, just put your hands into those gloves.
John:
i hear you so yeah so that was sad times i'm about to get one of these at work by the way i'm about to get a 2017 uh macbook pro at work i'll let you know if and when my key i think my keyboard will be fine because i plan to never touch it i plan to keep the thing closed and use it hooked up to a monitor and just use it as like a uh three times more powerful version of my mac pro that i have at work now hooked up to the very same monitor mouse and keyboard but uh we'll see
Casey:
You say that, but as Marco and I were just recounting an episode or two ago, clamshell mode is the worst.
John:
I'll leave it cracks, but the point is I'm going to not use that keyboard if I can help it.
Marco:
I mean, the thing is... I'm obviously always tempted to launch another rant about how this keyboard is awful to be on all the computers, but...
Marco:
It makes some sense for this awful keyboard to be on that computer.
Marco:
The one you have, Casey, not the one John's getting and the one that I have.
Marco:
But it makes sense.
Marco:
The MacBook Adorable 1 12 inch, whatever we're calling it, is super, super small and thin at all other costs.
Marco:
That is what that computer is for.
Marco:
So I honestly can't complain that much that they put this incredibly controversial, unreliable keyboard in that model.
John:
Well, you can complain about the reliability.
John:
Like, it's fine to make it super slim and compromised and everything, but reliability, no matter what you do, that should be the one thing... The job of the keyboard is when you press the key, it makes a letter on your screen, right?
John:
So it can't...
John:
We shouldn't be accepting this big of a downgrade in expected reliability.
John:
Because every keyboard goes bad eventually.
John:
I've broken a bunch of the flat aluminum ones.
John:
But they last for years before something goes wrong.
John:
And, I mean, it could be whatever the thing is.
John:
Not confirmation bias.
John:
But, you know, where you're hyper aware of people telling you tales of woe about their keyboards.
John:
But, boy, we've heard a lot of them from people who have this keyboard.
John:
And it just seems like a big change in reliability, in keyboard reliability.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I'm, you know, all laptop keyboards are going to, you know, go crappy eventually, probably.
John:
But within the first several months to have a key stop working to the point where it affects, it's not like, oh, it feels weird when I type, like to the point where it doesn't make the letter on the screen.
John:
That's just not acceptable, even for the slim one.
John:
That's true.
Marco:
Again, this is a problem that we didn't used to have.
Marco:
If you had a laptop that had a key break or die on it, it was maybe after five years or after you had abused it or dropped a whole bunch of crap in it.
Marco:
So that's one thing.
Marco:
That's probably unavoidable.
Marco:
But to have laptops where now this keyboard is on the entire line of laptops and that entire line of laptops has...
Marco:
significant reliability problems with the primary interface method that is a big problem that is a massive design flaw that shouldn't have shipped the first time let alone the second and in the case of the 12 inch third times so i really you know we there was remember that reddit thread that was a couple months ago that was allegedly from some manufacturing insider that was spilling details about who knows what about apple
Marco:
One of the things that said in there was that there's going to be a new key switch mechanism for the 2018 MacBook Pro revision that allegedly is going to be similar in thickness and travel, but it's going to be magnetic or something.
Marco:
There's going to be some kind of significant key switch change.
Marco:
i hope that is you know i hope something like that is going to happen i hope apple sees the way we do that you know we can't convince them to make this keyboard thicker to make it feel better that's never going to happen so i'll take what we can get let's just make this if we're going to have this this super thin keyboard that sacrifices the key travel for johnny ives thin world at least make it work reliably like there is no way
Marco:
In 2017 and 2018, we should not have unreliable laptop keyboards on brand new $2,000 and up laptops.
Marco:
That is completely unacceptable and ridiculous in this day and age.
Casey:
How to clean the keyboard of your MacBook or MacBook Pro.
Casey:
If your MacBook 2015 and later or MacBook Pro 2016 and later has an unresponsive key or a key that feels different than the other keys when you press it, follow these steps to clean the keyboard with compressed air.
Casey:
Number one, hold your Mac notebook at a 75 degree angle so it's not quite vertical.
Casey:
That's 75, kids, not 80, not 70.
Casey:
We covered this exact article on this show.
Casey:
You were there.
Casey:
It's so preposterous.
Casey:
I cannot believe that this is a thing.
Casey:
Number two, use compressed air to spray the keyboard or just the affected keys in a left to right motion.
Casey:
Number three, rotate your Mac notebook so it's right side.
Casey:
So it's right side.
Casey:
That's not even a full sentence.
Casey:
Rotate your Mac keyboard so it's right.
Casey:
Oh, to its right side.
Casey:
I can't read.
Casey:
My apologies.
Casey:
To its right side and spray the keyboard again.
Casey:
Apple can't make keyboards.
Casey:
It's fine.
Casey:
And spray the keyboard again from left to right.
Casey:
Number four, repeat the action this time with your Mac notebook rotated to its left side.
Casey:
This is asinine that this is a thing.
Casey:
Now, to be fair, my keyboard still worked.
Casey:
It just felt like garbage.
Casey:
Or one key felt like garbage.
Casey:
And by and large, I actually do still very much like this keyboard.
Casey:
I know, Marco, you don't, and that's fine.
Casey:
But in general, when it's working, I really like this keyboard.
Casey:
Similarly, when my car's valve train hasn't exploded, it's a very nice car.
Casey:
But yeah, it's just frustrating.
Casey:
It's very frustrating that I have had this computer for two and change months, and I'm already having to take restorative action to get the keyboard to work again.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And again, I've resigned myself to this new thin key switch thing that feels, to me, crappy.
Marco:
But I've resigned myself to that.
Marco:
I've been constantly reducing my expectations.
Marco:
Fine, I'll carry a dongle bag.
Marco:
Fine, I'll pay a little bit more.
Marco:
Fine, I'll have this touch bar on the big ones that I really don't like.
Marco:
At least make it reliable.
Marco:
Like, just make it work reliably.
Marco:
If you're going to make me swallow all of these other jagged, bitter pills, at least make the thing reliable.
Marco:
That's all.
Marco:
Like, I'm not asking for much here.
Marco:
I've reduced my expectations and given up on every other battle on these laptops.
Marco:
Just give me that.
Marco:
Alanis Morissette.
Casey:
Yeah, jagged little pill, though.
Casey:
Thank you very much.
John:
I know.
John:
I'm just saying that's Marco's brain farting out some references without his knowledge.
Marco:
I know.
Marco:
Honestly, not only is that a great album, but I was arguing with Tiff about this a few days ago.
Marco:
I would say that is possibly one of the most influential albums of the 90s.
John:
You 90s kids.
John:
Who cares?
Casey:
Oh, wow.
John:
You've got to wait 20 years before you can be nostalgic like we are about the 80s.
Casey:
You know, there are times, John.
Casey:
That's right.
John:
Not 10 more years, but actually 20.
John:
It's not a linear scale.
Casey:
So you are, what are you, like six or seven years older than we are?
Casey:
And usually that feels like six or seven minutes.
Casey:
But then there are times that it feels like six or seven decades.
Casey:
And this is one of those times.
John:
It's when you listen to Marco and Tiff talk about it.
John:
And you, for that matter, talk with nostalgia about 90s music and just like...
Marco:
What?
Marco:
It was more than 20 years ago for most of it.
John:
I know.
John:
I know.
John:
It just seems weird.
John:
That album came out in like 95, 96, something like that?
John:
I mean, maybe.
John:
I'm assuming people from the 70s feel the same way with people in this algebra about 80s music because, you know, it's all the 70s was good music and 80s was all this crap.
John:
But, you know, whatever.
John:
It's what age you are.
John:
I understand how it works.
John:
Just Alanis Morissette.
John:
Influential album.
John:
95.
John:
All right.
John:
Jeez.
John:
All right.
Casey:
That should be a top four.
Casey:
Top four albums in the 90s.
John:
I knew her when she was on You Can't Do That on Television.
John:
You didn't know her then.
Casey:
I sure did.
Casey:
I loved that show.
John:
That was a great show.
John:
Don't even start with me.
Casey:
Don't even start with me.
Casey:
Oh, you are such a turd.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's just move on.
Casey:
Let's just move on.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Ask ATP.
Marco:
Can we slime John somehow?
Casey:
Oh, I would love to.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
We should kickstart Sliming John and give the money to Houston or something like that.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
Somebody get on that.
Casey:
Anyway, Joe Lyon writes in to Ask ATP.
Casey:
This is a little bit long, so I remember seeing this, but it must have been an email or something.
Casey:
What is the long game in photo storage?
Casey:
Not just which cloud service do I use for the next five years, but how will photos be managed, stored, and handed down between generations?
Casey:
We take more pictures than ever, but then we lock them all into personal devices and accounts and print very few of them.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
coincidentally i was thinking about this recently um because i have i have really been wondering like if i were to suddenly pass away what would happen to the things that i care about like our pictures and because of that that that's yet another reason why why i recommend the one password family plan because you know aaron has my my password via one password she has my password for like google photos for example but
Casey:
But, you know, Joe Lyon's point is exactly right.
Casey:
Like it used to be that you would print all these pictures and create albums.
Casey:
And granted, there would be far fewer pictures than you would have in this digital age.
Casey:
But at least there was something you can physically give to somebody else.
Casey:
What does the future bring?
Casey:
And I'll start with the the semi pro photographer.
Casey:
Marco, what do you think about this?
Marco:
I'm barely even that anymore, but it's a bigger question of lots of things regarding your data integrity and everything else.
Marco:
It goes way beyond just photos, but lots of your other data as well.
Marco:
But, I mean, largely, once I'm gone, I won't care.
Marco:
I won't be able to care.
Marco:
So it's largely not my problem with my particular stuff, but I think it relies... The Nihilist Guide to Photo Backup by Marco Armit.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
But, like, you know, I think it relies on your family and people who come after you.
Marco:
It relies on them caring, just like preservation of anything from previous generations.
Marco:
Like, if they care, you know, it basically, you know, we as the people who have this data now...
Marco:
I think we do have some responsibility to have some kind of recovery that our heirs will have access to after we're gone.
Marco:
So things like making sure that our family has access to passwords and data and stuff like that.
Marco:
But beyond that, it's up to the next generations to care.
Marco:
And it always has been.
Marco:
Every family, you only know what your relatives have been able to pass on to you.
Marco:
You only have what they have carried with them and what they still have in their possessions from previous generations.
Marco:
And the same thing is going to apply to this.
Marco:
In some ways, it is easier than ever to keep this stuff.
Marco:
And especially as time goes on...
Marco:
My entire photo collection from the first year I was taking photos with the digital camera, which was like 2004, I think.
Marco:
Or no, 2000, really.
Marco:
But my entire photo collection from that year is like a few hundred megs at most.
Marco:
It's nothing compared to... And as time goes on, every year that goes by, hard drives get bigger.
Marco:
and cameras get better, and photos get bigger, and so it seems like everything's always really big, but what was taken in the past with low-resolution cameras, lower-resolution sensors, less data being captured, less video, more stills, I don't know, I feel like it's not that hard if you care, and if your heirs and relatives care.
Marco:
It isn't that hard to keep stuff and to pass it down.
Marco:
It's just an issue of, will the people who inherit your things actually care to keep them?
John:
And that's always been a problem.
John:
And photos don't get bigger all the time.
John:
Like you said, photos get bigger every year and cameras get better.
John:
But we are probably already very close to limits of human visual acuity on the highest end cameras.
John:
And we're just waiting for that to trickle down.
John:
Once your phone is taking 42 megapixel images,
John:
Do you think in 10 years they're going to be taking 84 megapixel images?
John:
They will not.
John:
What are we going to do?
John:
Blow it up to a poster the size of a football stadium?
John:
We are close to the limits.
John:
And if storage continues to increase at any rate, while the size of photos stays more or less the same, maybe even gets smaller if we have better compression tech...
John:
this is the storage of photos is a problem that will solve itself essentially uh as storage size increases so just in the same way it's easy for marker to take his 100 megs of photos from 2000 in 50 years it will be much easier to take our quote-unquote massive photo libraries and put them uh in in the storage of the day and 50 years they will not be taking 10 000 megapixel photos they'll probably be like
John:
50 to 100 megapixel photos if even that probably not even that then it's not it's gonna stop because you can't there's no point in more pixels like again you're not blowing it up to a poster that covers your entire house uh so that that little that part of the problem will take care of itself i have some faith in that kind of like music did like the music files like
John:
you know even if they go to flack that's it like limits of human acuity bit depth right all things we talk about take the biggest audio file you could have is there a benefit to making something a hundred times bigger no there isn't because we can't hear anything better than that that's it the audio will never get bigger than than that you know and multi-channel and so on and so forth so
John:
uh i'm optimistic about that and it's the thing to remember about trends like this where it's like oh we're just it's never you know it's just going to continue on and on some of the lines and they were after level off and that is a saving grace yeah um the thing i would add though this this is just a backup problem like anything outside from the social things like oh passing it on and and
John:
having you know sharing your passwords that you should definitely do that but like any other backup problem it's all about diversity right so print some pictures first of all because that is a diversified backup strategy physical things versus digital things the physical things are worse they deteriorate that you can lose them that you know they take up space so on and so forth
John:
But it's a it's an important diversification.
John:
You print some books from from Apple's photos app, go to Shutterfly or whatever.
John:
Print some pictures from one of our sponsors of this episode.
John:
Right.
John:
That is a diversification.
John:
That's also, as Marco will surely say in the ad read.
John:
not just diversification of backup but it lets you look at your pictures like you know we all have so many pictures but if they're in a digital thing like how often do you even look at them i think i spent more time looking at the pictures on my phone in the new uncharted game than i do looking at the pictures on my actual phone so printing them and hanging them on your wall lets you enjoy them for the time you're alive before you don't care like margo when he's dead um and
John:
And diversification of backup means also perhaps winnowing your collection down to some really good pictures and sharing them with a relative.
John:
This is a case where you're not doing it for a backup, but you just want to give other people your photos.
John:
And I think we're in a much better situation than we were in the past because it's harder, I think, for the shoebox full of photos or photo albums to transfer from the elderly relative who's died to the rest of the family because people don't want, here's like 50 pounds of photo albums.
John:
Or even just a shoebox.
John:
People don't want that junk, especially when you're trying to clear out all the belongings and everything like that, and you're trying to save the few precious things like one or two wedding photos.
John:
Them being digital and us having a fighting chance, at least, of losslessly carrying them across generations is merely a matter of making that process easy enough to do.
John:
And I think as we all die and the people who grew up in sort of the cusp of the digital age die off,
John:
the process of figuring out how to get our crap to continue on will be worked out in a generation or two and so i have a lot of confidence that a sort of permanent growing archive of things associated with a family will be passed on from generation to generation again because storage sizes will keep going up not forever but they'll keep going up long after the the size of the things we're doing go up and i by the way i also think there's a limit on number of photos we'll take too because
John:
I mean, I guess you just switch to constantly recorded video, but there's some social parts of that that I think won't make it happen.
John:
But we take so many more pictures now than we used to, especially if we have kids.
John:
But in 300 years, we're not going to be taking a thousand times more photos.
John:
Like, you just can't do that.
John:
We'll be taking a photo every half a second for our entire lives, 24 hours a day.
John:
That's just video, and I don't think we want to record every second of our lives.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I am much more optimistic than Joe Lyon about this, but I would recommend people think about the password sharing thing like Casey said, diversify your photo backups, and maybe get a couple of them and print them and hang them on your wall so you can look at them while you're still alive.
Casey:
Brad Ringel asks, it's been discussed a bit, but can you give a brief rundown of how you decided on a camera to buy and suggestions for a beginner?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I will start and say that what I had done was look around at my friends and try to figure out what was something that felt kind of entry level and approachable with, and also was, was reasonably easy to carry physically because it wasn't, you know, the size of a DSLR.
Casey:
And so I have an Olympus OMD EM10.
Casey:
I'll put a link in the show notes to a couple of actually two or three year old review now of, of that camera.
Casey:
It's the one I still use.
Casey:
This is a Micro Four Thirds camera, and it has interchangeable lenses, and so I spent a fair bit of money on, well, what I thought was a fair bit of money on both the body and one really nice prime lens.
Casey:
That prime lens lasted me for the first couple of years I had the camera, and then about a year ago I added a zoom lens.
Casey:
I chose this because Sean Blanc had recommended it very, very strongly.
Casey:
And I love this camera.
Casey:
By no means is it the best camera in the entire world, but I love it.
Casey:
And it is done right by me and helped me get better as a photographer.
Casey:
because it allows and not to say that's unique to this camera by any stretch but but this one is very good because it allows interchangeable lenses and it allows me to do things like shoot an aperture priority which is to say i can concentrate on getting one thing right and the rest of it will just automatically happen again i'm not saying that's unique to this camera but that's kind of how i got started and that's generally speaking how i still shoot today
Casey:
And suggestions for a beginner.
Casey:
You know, everyone says this.
Casey:
And I remember, Marco, you and me and Aaron and Tiff were sitting in some restaurant in New York forever ago.
Casey:
And we were talking about cameras.
Casey:
And I remember you and Tiff saying to me, there are two rules to being a good photographer.
Casey:
Number one, never use the flash.
Casey:
And number two, take a bazillion pictures.
Casey:
Because if you take a bazillion pictures, at least one of them will be okay.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
And I really think as as cliche and as silly and as frustrating as that may sound to a beginner, that really, really is the case.
Casey:
Like I would recommend getting enough of a camera that that you feel like you've got something interesting and special.
Casey:
And that doesn't have to be very expensive by any means, but enough that maybe you can get a little bokeh, bokeh, however you pronounce it.
Casey:
But other than that, just try to avoid the flash and take a lot of pictures.
Casey:
And I think that's sufficient.
Casey:
So, John, let's go to you next.
Casey:
What do you recommend?
John:
uh i basically bought the camera marco told me to uh it's a good strategy for many things in life uh but i for the caveat though i did he also told me about lens rentals and so before before i bought it i'm pretty sure you guys may remember that i do didn't i didn't i rent the that camera first before i decided to plunk down the money for it i believe you did it was either that one or its predecessor
Casey:
And I did the same, by the way.
John:
Yeah, no, it was a 63.
John:
And I remember when Marco recommended it, I wasn't that keen on it because I basically wanted a fancier camera, but then I used Marco's A7R2 or whatever it used to have, and it just seemed too big.
John:
And so then I'm like, all right, maybe he was right, the small one.
John:
So I rented it and liked it and bought it.
John:
And honestly, I didn't shop around that too much because that's a service both Wirecutter and Marco provide.
John:
If you don't want to spend a year researching stuff,
John:
i did actually spend a very long time researching super zooms because i had experience with a couple of them and i'm like let me just find the successor to my family camera and i get my super zoom and i could never find one that that seemed like it was a win over what i was doing so yeah so ask friends who know stuff about cameras and before you plunk down a large amount of money it seems large to someone who doesn't buy fancy cameras
John:
consider something like lens rentals where it seems like oh my how much am i paying to rent this but it's cheaper than buying the camera and realizing you don't want it and having to you know find a way to sell it at a loss and everything so um that that that i think that works for me and honestly in the age of internet you know if you don't know marco personally there is the the wire cutter there is dp review and
John:
you can find the information out there and then just come up with a couple of candidates, borrow or rent them to see which one you like and then go for it.
John:
I agree with Casey.
John:
Go like kind of like a Mac storage, go a little bit more than you think, like save money for an extra six months if you have to, because you will never regret getting a slightly nicer camera.
John:
You may regret getting a slightly bigger camera.
John:
So that's why I say use it and see if you feel like, does this camera fit into my life?
John:
But yeah,
John:
make it make it something special especially in the age of our phone cameras are all so good if you're going to buy a camera camera that all it does is camera stuff make it better enough than your phone camera that it's not close and that will make you excited to use your quote-unquote good camera like i do take a lot of pictures with my phone i take video with my phone but i really like my
John:
fancy and not that fancy but my my my quote-unquote real camera i really like that i use it a lot you know not all the time not every day but i like knowing that it's there and when i do use it you know like i said 2 000 pictures coming home from the ocean from one day uh that's a good time for me
Casey:
Yeah, and I would just like to quickly double down on what you said about lens rentals.
Casey:
I've used lensrentals.com.
Casey:
They've never sponsored.
Casey:
I rented the camera that I now have before we bought one and got a chance to play with it for a few days.
Casey:
And in fact, I rented it to take, well, I had my dad do it, but to take maternity shots for Aaron before Declan was born.
Casey:
And I got to spend some time with it.
Casey:
Dad took these really beautiful pictures with it.
Casey:
And he's not a photographer.
Casey:
He just was able to take really good shots with a combination of this body and this lens.
Casey:
And so I completely agree with John.
Casey:
And I think Marco was the one who originally recommended it to me as well.
Casey:
Take a spin with whatever camera you're looking at.
Casey:
And it cost me like $150 or something like that to get the camera for a few days and the lens I wanted for a few days.
Casey:
But it was worth its price in gold because it made me know that this $1,500 or $2,000 expenditure I ended up spending was worth it.
Casey:
So Marco, what would you say about this?
Casey:
What's a good set of tips for a beginner?
Marco:
You guys have actually covered it really well.
Marco:
I don't have that much more to add.
Marco:
You can be talking for 20 minutes now.
Marco:
I mean, you know, I know myself pretty well.
Marco:
So, yeah, I mean, definitely, you know, renting before you buy is very valuable because, you know, you spent that, you know, $150 and, you know, go to lensrentals.com.
Marco:
I think there are other sites, but I've always used Lens Rentals and I've had excellent experiences with them over the years, over a pretty long time, over lots of different rentals of lots of different things.
Marco:
A few times I needed the customer service.
Marco:
It was excellent every time.
Marco:
And they're a pretty big operation and pretty reputable.
Marco:
So I highly recommend Lens Rentals.
Marco:
You're right.
Marco:
They have never sponsored us.
Marco:
I don't think they ever would sponsor us.
Marco:
But now they don't need to because we're giving this away for free.
Marco:
So because not only did you learn what – you basically got confirmation that what you wanted to buy was probably a good idea.
Marco:
But in some cases, it can teach you that you don't want to buy something.
Marco:
If you rent it and you learn, actually, this is too big or the handling doesn't work out for me or whatever, it's useful for that.
Marco:
It's also useful for if there's some really expensive piece of gear, whether it's a camera or a lens usually more often, hence the name, something that you don't need very often.
Marco:
I was shooting the talk show live at WBDC two years ago, and I shot it with a rented lens because I knew I would need a certain type of zoom lens to do a really good job with it.
Marco:
But it's a lens that I hardly ever need in my daily life, and it was very expensive to buy.
Marco:
So I just rented it for the week, and it was way less money.
Marco:
And I learned as I was renting it, like, wow, I'm so glad I don't own this lens because it's giant and heavy, and I really don't want to have this most of the time.
Marco:
I only very rarely need it.
Marco:
So it's nice to actually consider the possibility...
Marco:
of renting things just as as part of the way you operate in the in the camera world because there is so much like incredibly specialized gear that you might need twice or once and it's it's probably not worth buying it for that but for those one or two times it's really really nice
Casey:
Yeah, and that actually is a really great point as well, because after I'd had my camera for a couple of years, I had my eye on a zoom lens.
Casey:
And I forget the specifics, but I want to say it was like a 100 to 300 millimeter zoom, which is something like double that in a DSLR, maybe half that.
Casey:
I forget how it all works out.
Casey:
But it ended up that it was like a really, really, really strong zoom.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so you had to be like, you know, 20, 30, 40 feet away from your subject before it was even useful.
Casey:
And then and then that's when it started to be useful.
Casey:
And again, I'm making up the details here, but it was something along those lines.
Casey:
And so I rented it for a week.
Casey:
And I actually strictly speaking, Aaron rented it for me for like a birthday present or something because she knew I was looking at it.
Casey:
And it turns out it was a terrible lens.
Casey:
And I was so thankful that Aaron had spent the money to rent it for me because I then knew that it wasn't worth like $800 or whatever it cost to get that lens.
Casey:
And the zoom lens I ended up with was quite a bit different.
Casey:
And I knew that because I then rented that lens and spent some time with it and knew that it was worth the money.
Casey:
So yeah, I completely, completely doubled down, tripled down even on the lens rentals idea.
Casey:
I couldn't recommend it enough.
Marco:
And to expand a little bit on what John said about renting it or getting a handle on how it feels and possibly regretting things like size and weight down the road.
Marco:
Or battery life.
Marco:
Yes, or battery life.
Marco:
I would say one of the best things you can do if you're in the market for a camera is to go to a store that has them in person and to actually be able to look at them in person next to each other.
Marco:
Do some basic research before you get to the store just so you know roughly what models offer the kinds of things that you're looking for.
Marco:
But actually pick them up and see them in person.
Marco:
See them next to each other.
Marco:
Try to handle them.
Marco:
See certain ones.
Marco:
Cameras these days have so many capabilities, but they're also oftentimes very small.
Marco:
And so ergonomics become a pretty big challenge in a lot of them.
Marco:
Usability of the various menus and controls and dials and everything.
Marco:
These are all pretty major factors that differ significantly between different models.
Marco:
And so anything you can do to get your hands on them.
Marco:
It's the precursor to renting them, basically.
Marco:
Anything you can do to get your hands on them and see them in person before you decide...
Marco:
And because you can you can read a review or you can hear me say something about a certain model or you can go to the wire cutter and you can go to DP review and you can spend hours and hours and hours I have on these sites like when you're trying to make a decision on what camera to buy for you or what's right for you.
Marco:
That's good.
Marco:
You should do some of that.
Marco:
But the model of trying to figure out what is the one camera you should buy in this price range, that really is not a great model for this because different cameras will work for different people and there really isn't one great model that everyone should buy in each price range or in each size category.
Marco:
I was able to give John a decent recommendation for him because
Marco:
I had more information about what he wanted, and he had used my medium-sized one, and so there was more to go on.
Marco:
But if you just go to some site that tries to pick, like, here's the one camera you should get in this category, that might not be right for you.
Marco:
So anything you can do to see them in person, to use them, whether it's going to a store or renting one that you think you might want to buy or both, ideally you kind of narrow down as you go.
Marco:
It's invaluable because really the cameras that are out there, they are so different in how they handle.
Marco:
And a lot of times a camera that might not have the best sensor or the best technical specs in certain areas, a lot of times if it just handles better, you will end up using it more or you will enjoy using it more because of just the physical differences or the other differences that aren't just like the sensor quality.
Marco:
And this is a lesson I've often not learned fully when I've made certain decisions, but I try to recover from that.
Marco:
I try to get better over time because it matters so, so much.
Marco:
Just how it handles, how it behaves, how it performs in your hand, in the mechanics of using it.
Marco:
One of the ones that I...
Marco:
have heard great things about, and I have very little experience with them, is the Fuji X line.
Marco:
People love these things.
Marco:
There is the X-T1, the X-T2, the X-100.
Marco:
I haven't followed them too closely, but these are cameras that...
Marco:
they often don't perform top-notch in certain spec comparisons, but people just love them because of their ergonomics and their mechanics and things like that.
Marco:
That's the kind of thing you want to look for.
Marco:
Similarly, like, you know, it's hard to understand the appeal of Leica cameras because Leicas are very, very expensive.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
eye-wateringly expensive and you think why would anybody buy that when you know like the sensor doesn't perform any better than like a sony sensor or something like that and and like a couple of times i've had a chance to actually handle like a camera um and they like there is a certain degree of like wow this is just really nicely handling it's nice it's responsive it feels good it like i feel good using it like there's there is some degree of that and so like
Marco:
There are these other factors when you're looking at the – and by the way, this does not apply just to cameras.
Marco:
But there are these other factors when you look at a buying decision like this where you can do as many spec comparisons as you want on paper and on websites and everything.
Marco:
But it's really hard to do a really – it's really hard to know how much you're going to actually love using it.
Marco:
until you actually get a chance to try it and that's that's again that's why we say go see these things in the store if you can rent one like those are great options uh and and for something like this that's that's so personal and and where not everyone has the same requirements that's pretty good and then finally to definitely definitely echo what john said you you want a camera that is going to be a lot better than your phone
Marco:
If it isn't a lot better than your phone, you should not buy it.
Marco:
There is no reason for you to buy a camera that's only a little better than your phone.
Marco:
And phone cameras are really good, and they keep getting better at an alarming pace.
Marco:
They keep getting remarkably better.
Marco:
And so I would say, you know, generally speaking, I mean, there are exceptions.
Marco:
It's hard to give like a firm, like a price floor here that's meaningful.
Marco:
But I would say if you're spending less than probably $1,000, you're probably not getting a quality jump that makes sense in the world of today's smartphones.
Marco:
Especially if you're listening to this show, you're probably an iPhone user.
Marco:
You're probably a user of a fairly recent iPhone.
Marco:
And that's going to be hard to beat with anything below $1,000 in a lot of situations.
Marco:
Most of the recommendations that I give are in the $1,000 to $3,000 range.
Marco:
And that's a lot of money.
Marco:
And you have to ask yourself, is that really worth it?
Marco:
For a lot of people, it isn't.
Marco:
Or you might go through all this and realize, actually, I still take most of my pictures on my phone because my phone's always with me and the cameras keep getting better and they offer more interesting features in a lot of cases like live photos and automatic HDR and stuff that other cameras can do sometimes or can do some of these things, but they're clunky or don't work as well or harder to use.
Marco:
So it's like...
Marco:
A standalone camera these days has to be way better than your phone to make it worth buying and to make sure you'll actually use it on a regular basis.
Marco:
So if you're not willing or able to spend over $1,000, I would say, easily, on a camera and a couple of lenses for it, I would say it's probably not worth it.
Marco:
You should probably just get the best phone you can and use its camera.
Casey:
I agree with that.
Casey:
Oplez writes, have any of you used or played the notoriety card in your day-to-day life to get something you wanted?
Casey:
And I will start with John.
John:
I put this question in here because I want to reemphasize to people exactly how...
John:
little notoriety we have like maybe it seems like like there is no card to play even at wwc where we are that is that is the the maximum of our fame and notoriety is like we're there with the highest percentage chance that people know who we are is like at wwc even there
John:
I have never had a way to parlay my notoriety into pretty much anything except for perhaps giving me the confidence to go up and talk to somebody who I might not otherwise, even though I don't have any expectation they're going to know who I am.
John:
I guess that's my answer.
John:
It's like...
John:
I have never played the notoriety card because there's no card to be played.
John:
But my impression of my own notoriety in very specific circumstances where a specific kind of nerd gathers for a week, it has given me the confidence to overcome what would normally be my inclination to never talk to another human being to go talk to somebody and introduce myself.
John:
Most people, you know, if you don't have my personality, you don't need that extra boost of confidence.
John:
But I really want to emphasize to listeners, we have no notoriety.
John:
No one knows who we are.
John:
No one knows what a podcast is.
John:
Well, maybe not with cereal.
John:
podcast what's that you know cereal oh i think i heard of that anyway that's that's my answer marco
Marco:
i don't think i have used it in a useful way because of you know what john said it's like you know if you actually would take that risk and say do you know who i am like chances are the answer you're gonna get back is nope and that's that's not a good risk to take you know even if you can get over the fact that best case scenario they do know who you are and you've just been a huge jerk like that's
Marco:
that is yeah that that's not my style that's not how i interact with the world um even if i knew i could get away with it i would still not try to do it because that's just i don't want to do that but john is correct in reality there is almost nowhere where we could be where we could pull a card like that and have it actually work like maybe maybe and
Marco:
at our own live show like like in the room seconds after we've walked off stage maybe but anywhere else that would not work at all and yeah that's that's not we don't have any degree of actual fame in any context where this would even be a possibility let alone the fact that i think none of the three of us have the personality type to actually try to pull a card like that
John:
Well, there was there was that one time where I wished that it worked, where I forgot my wallet and I couldn't pick up my hardware and I had to drive all the way back home.
John:
And it's not because I wanted any special treatments because I didn't want to drive all the way back home because I felt dumb for leaving my wallet, you know, at home.
John:
I couldn't pick up my thing at the Apple store.
John:
I didn't actually do it.
John:
I did jokingly offer.
John:
Well, just Google my name and my picture will come up.
John:
And I was half joking, but I was kind of half serious.
John:
Like, you need to know I am who I am.
John:
Type my name into a Google search box, but just I had to drive all the way back home.
John:
And that's, again, that's just me trying to save myself commuting time so I don't feel quite as dumb for leaving home without my wallet.
John:
But that is the one time.
John:
And note that, like, I didn't say why they should Google my name and why I might come up.
John:
Of course, I would never do that.
John:
And they didn't know who I am and didn't care, and I had to get my freaking wallet.
Casey:
I think it is really, really gross to try to be like, oh, don't you know who I am?
Casey:
So let me tell you about the three times that I did it.
Casey:
The first time was, I forget, I guess it was, I don't remember what year it was, but maybe it was 2016, I guess, that I tried emailing a few people at Apple and being like, hey, I don't have a WWDC ticket.
Casey:
Maybe I could do something about that.
Casey:
Didn't work.
Casey:
The second time was when I was trying to get my current job.
Casey:
And I don't know if it's really being like, do you know who I am?
Casey:
But I definitely mentioned that I had a popular Apple podcast on my resume.
Casey:
And the reason I did that was because I was trying to switch careers from being a Microsoft developer to being an Apple developer.
Casey:
And I was trying to figure out any justifiable reason to hire me at that point and to take a risk on me.
Casey:
The final time is one that you two did not know about, and I wasn't planning on telling you about, and I'm only going to talk about it very lightly because I'm trying to think of how to describe this without giving it away.
Casey:
It...
Casey:
It was offered to me because of the show.
Casey:
So it was not really a do you know who I am, but it was offered to me because of the show and because of a friend that listens to the show.
Casey:
Would you like to get access to a car from the press fleet from a manufacturer that none of us would normally have access to?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
To which I said, yes, absolutely.
Casey:
I haven't heard much since then, and it's been a month or two.
Casey:
So I'm guessing that this didn't work out.
Casey:
In a few months, like by the end of the year, if I haven't had access to this press car, I will concede maybe privately, maybe publicly what it was.
Casey:
But on the slim chance that I actually do get a week with this particular car, which is a car that I would never generally have access to, I don't want to spoil the surprise.
Casey:
But that is somewhat sort of kind of...
Casey:
me leveraging my do you know who i am even though it was offered to me i did not request it and that is all i'm going to say is it some garbage car that we're going to laugh at like the stupid jeep cherokee with like a big engine or some crap first of all the cherokee srt8 is not stupid you big it is stupid and gross
John:
Anyway, is it the type of car, and we know you're excited about it, is it the type of car that we're going to be excited about it, or is it just the type of car where it's going to be like a Casey car, like a Camaro ZL1?
John:
I guess I would kind of be excited about it.
Casey:
Why are you so mean to me, John?
John:
I would not be excited about a Veyron.
John:
I just want to put that out there, because I think the Veyron is also stupid and gross.
John:
So I only have one question about the car, and you know what it is.
Casey:
It is not a Tesla.
Casey:
That wasn't the question.
Casey:
Oh, okay.
Marco:
What color is it?
Casey:
I don't know, but I would guess that it is red, and that is all I will say.
John:
Interesting.
John:
I'm interested in Ferraris.
John:
It is not a Ferrari.
John:
Unless it's the California.
John:
I don't like that one.
John:
And then the replacement for the California is also gross.
John:
What the hell is the California replacement chat room?
Marco:
I love that you'd even be picky about which Ferrari you got to borrow.
John:
It's totally true.
John:
I've thought about that.
John:
But wouldn't you care?
John:
Wouldn't you be excited about it?
John:
And I'd be like, no, not that one.
Casey:
John, you are the worst.
John:
I don't like that one.
John:
And the replacement has similarly... Come on, chat room.
John:
What's the replacement for the California?
John:
Portofino.
John:
There we go.
John:
Thank you.
John:
Portofino at least has a better name.
John:
And it does look nicer than the California.
John:
But still, it's like the Ferrari that I don't want.
John:
I'd rather have the weird four-wheel drive FF thing.
John:
Well, the replacement.
John:
You just said it.
John:
The GT4 Lusso in the pre-pre-show.
John:
It won't be there.
John:
I'd rather have that than the Portofino or California.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Thank you very much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, so 90 minutes in.
Casey:
You want to start the show?
Casey:
Because I think it's time.
John:
All of our topics are short today.
Casey:
Oh, really?
Casey:
Okay, listeners, buckle up.
Casey:
Let's talk about APFS.
Marco:
We are really good at short topics here on ATV.
Casey:
Seriously.
Casey:
Okay, so let's talk about this short topic, John.
Casey:
The clock is ticking.
Casey:
Tell me about APFS conversion in High Sierra.
John:
this is a bit of news that was officially published by apple this week or very recently anyway between the show and last show they have a an article we'll link in the show it's official apple documentation not about like betas or whatever but like hey when you upgrade to mac os high sierra systems with all flash storage will be converted automatically to apfs so if you have a mac and it has flash storage
John:
and you upgrade to the mac os high sierra you are getting converted to apfs you cannot opt out of the transition to apfs this is right from their documentation so it's not like as in the betas like oh you can convert or not convert and decide later whatever if you upgrade to high sierra and you got flash you're gonna get it even if you have a third party flash right we have one listener write in to say i have a mac that shipped with a spinning disk but i replaced it with ssd upgrade to high sierra automatic upgrade to apfs a lot of people installed the one of the later high sierra betas
John:
And didn't even realize they had been converted to APFS.
John:
Because, like, how would you even tell?
John:
Because it doesn't ask you anything about it.
John:
It just does it, right?
John:
If you have a hard disk or a fusion drive, you won't be converted.
John:
I don't know if that means you can't be.
John:
I think you can still go to disk utility and decide to convert your thing.
John:
But anyway, that's what they're doing.
John:
It's a very simple, straightforward policy.
John:
Uh, and there's no choice in the matter and we're all just going to deal with it.
John:
A couple of people have reported their Macs being unbootable, but they're, it's still in beta and who knows, but I, I suspect the Mac transition will be rockier than the iOS one.
John:
Uh, and then the only other minor item on this page that will link is, uh,
John:
boot camp doesn't read or write apfs in case you were wondering i really hope boot camp continues to be supported uh i hope they write a read-only driver for apfs so you can at least read your stuff but uh right now you won't be able to so did boot camp read hfs i think there was a read-only driver for hfs maybe i'm thinking of the other way where they had a read-only driver for ntfs but
Marco:
either way there is some way i think you can get uh hfs volumes you can at least read from them on windows even if it's not through apple stuff but apfs is just too new and if anyone was going to do it was going to be apple and they didn't yet anyway yeah this is totally a fine change to me like you know they they have this apfs was automatically converted to and deployed very widely on ios devices and as far as we know nothing bad happened
Marco:
And yes, the problem set is much smaller on iOS devices.
Marco:
The number of possible configurations is much smaller.
Marco:
So the edge case count is way smaller on iOS.
Marco:
But also the install base is way bigger.
Marco:
The usage is way bigger.
Marco:
So it seems like APFS is pretty solid.
Marco:
And I'm sure there are areas like I believe they still haven't done automatic integrity checking, right?
John:
At the file system level?
John:
Yeah, that's not data, right?
John:
The checksums on metadata only, not on data.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So there are areas of the file system that still could be improved, ideally.
Marco:
But what is there seems to be pretty solid.
Marco:
The fact that they deployed it to every iOS device, and that's been running now for months, and it's been totally fine.
Marco:
that's pretty great.
Marco:
So we know they're doing this carefully.
Marco:
We know, like Craig Federighi mentioned in the talk show live at Everybody See This Year, how a couple of versions before that, when they deployed to iOS, they would do test migrations and roll them back and then report back if anything failed to Apple.
Marco:
So they knew what was happening there.
Marco:
There have been some reports...
Marco:
somebody pointed out that the latest mac os 10 update seemed to take a very long time to to apply and so there was a theory that you know maybe it was doing the same thing maybe it was doing those test migrations that then get rolled back before it completed you know like it seems like apple knows how to do this there it's already been done on a very very large scale and this will be relatively speaking a drop in the bucket
Marco:
Again, there are more edge cases on the Mac, more different configurations that can be used, more ways people use the file system or depend on things working a certain way.
Marco:
But I think they're doing a pretty good job of it, and I trust them to do this correctly and carefully.
Marco:
So I don't think this is bad at all.
Casey:
You know, that was pretty quick.
Casey:
I have to concede.
Casey:
I'm stunned.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So, Marco, tell me about the lack of home button on the iPhone Pro slash 8 slash whatever it's called, because there seems to have been some news from Bloomberg that there will be no physical home button on the new iPhone.
Marco:
Well, we already knew there would be no physical home button, but this was more about like – this is today's rumor that came out that basically is claiming a certain way that the software-based home button will work.
Marco:
That is different from what we've heard or assumed in the past.
Marco:
So what we've assumed up until now or heard up until now as rumors is basically that there would be an area basically where the home button is now –
Marco:
but there would be an area on the phone that you would push firmly there, and it would go home.
Marco:
And how that would be represented on the screen was up for debate.
Marco:
There was some speculation from the HomePod form, or that maybe there was some kind of home indicator that could show or hide at different times, whether it's a little circle down there, or a dot, or who knows.
Marco:
This whole area...
Marco:
We know a lot from the HomePod leak and from all the rumor sites.
Marco:
We know some things pretty firmly about the physical design of the next iPhone.
Marco:
But the whole area that I think is most interesting to me is how the software will actually deal with this physical design.
Marco:
And that is still mostly unknown to us.
Marco:
Of all the leaks, including the HomePod firmware, not to mention all the rumors...
Marco:
There's not you would think at first like there's not much surprise left for the event but actually to me there's tons of surprise left because we still don't have concrete solid information and we still haven't seen how the software will actually deal with this bizarre all screen phone with this notch on the top.
Marco:
That, to me, is the most interesting part, and I think most of that's going to remain a surprise.
Marco:
Anyway, Bloomberg's trying to ruin that a little bit by claiming that the home button is going to work a totally different way, that basically, instead of having an area that you push at the bottom, that you're going to have a swipe up kind of gesture, not that different from what the iPad does on iOS 11 with the dock, like a big swipe up gesture to go home, instead of pushing that area at the bottom.
Marco:
and that therefore the entire screen basically will be usable as regular application area, not just having that hole in the bottom for a home button and maybe a toolbar area to the left and right of it.
Marco:
And if this is true, obviously this raises a lot of questions about implementation details, if this is the direction they go,
Marco:
I'm certainly – that's going to be a major change, so I'm certainly a little wary of it.
Marco:
But it would avoid a lot of issues because if you think about – if they do the method that we assumed before this, which is they have like a home area that if you push there, it works like a home button, which I think is roughly what Samsung does with their edge-to-edge thing, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Like I used one in the store and I just kind of pushed down there and it seemed to work.
Marco:
So I think that's basically what Samsung does.
Marco:
And that worked fine as far as I could tell when I used it for two seconds in a Best Buy.
Marco:
But if they do that, it does raise a lot of questions about things like, well, what happens to app UI that's down there?
Marco:
Do you have tab bars still?
Marco:
If so, does the tab bar just go completely on top of that so that that whole bottom half of the screen is just a home button and maybe something on the left and right of it that maybe you can't control or you don't have full control or you can only put maybe a navigation item down there or something like that?
Marco:
Is it like that?
Marco:
Because if that's the case, then that whole bottom area is...
Marco:
fairly significantly wasted.
Marco:
It's not totally wasted, but it raises the question of why even make it a screen if you're not going to have much use for that area.
Marco:
If they let applications put content down there, but also have a big home button hole in the middle of that bottom row, then you have to think, what happens with things like tab bars?
Marco:
Where you typically have this row of four or five buttons across the bottom of the screen.
Marco:
Do you go with a two on the left, two on the right, nothing in the middle kind of arrangement, or something like that, and just have a big hole in the middle of any tab bar that goes on there?
Marco:
You can.
Marco:
That's one option.
Marco:
It's not a great option, but you can do that.
Marco:
The claimed method by this Bloomberg article...
Marco:
is that it's going to be swipe-based, and that basically the entire screen will be usable for apps, or the vast majority of the screen will be usable for apps most of the time, and there won't be this hole in the middle of the bottom that is reserved for the home button, that some kind of swipe up from the bottom will be used instead to go home.
Marco:
If so, I'm interested to see that.
Marco:
That sounds like it would solve some of these problems.
Marco:
I think it might introduce new problems, but I don't think we know enough as actual fact, not just speculation, to say for sure...
Marco:
Obviously, this is what they're doing.
Marco:
We don't know that yet.
Marco:
But we also don't have enough information here to really know for sure what they're going to do.
Marco:
I would also say that Bloomberg and German's record on things like this in recent times has been pretty spotty.
Marco:
So I would not take this as fact and would definitely not take this as a given.
John:
The thing he does lately, which I don't understand because it doesn't seem like he needs to do this, is writes about things in the present tense, like Apple is experimenting with different ways that the home button can work.
John:
It's like Apple perhaps did experiment with different ways that the home button would work, but...
John:
at this point with the event like a week or two away apple's not experimenting with different ways of different fundamental ways to use that bottom half of the screen yeah i'm pretty sure they know yeah like they've picked one by now or even like worst case they have two complete implementations that they're going to pick between but they're not in the experimental stage anymore like that ship has sailed anyway um on this particular thing about the home button
John:
This gives a little bit more of the answer of what the heck do we get with edge touch screen?
John:
Because if they don't have to dedicate any of the bottom of the screen to essentially to UI, but the app can use it all.
John:
Hey, I got, now I can see more tweets, right?
John:
Whatever.
John:
Like it's, it's a benefit.
John:
You can see it being a benefit and it makes that part of the screen.
John:
Like you're actually using it.
John:
It's not just like a virtual representation of the, the chin on our phones today.
John:
But, but all that said, if it is swipe based, um,
John:
swiping on on phones for me and i think i think forever just like in general um to do a successful swipe case or no case anything like that is a you have to it's like you have to find the right balance between how hard you press your finger on the screen and
John:
and how hard you swipe and how you hold the phone.
John:
Because obviously, if you press too hard, you get too much friction.
John:
It's hard to slide your finger and do the gesture.
John:
If you press too lightly and just graze it, maybe it won't activate, especially if your fingers are cold or whatever, right?
John:
So there's a balance.
John:
You have to...
John:
It requires more finesse to do any kind of swipe gesture than it does to do a button press, virtual or otherwise.
John:
Because with a button press, you find the place where you need to apply the pressure and you just bear down.
John:
And for the most part, unless you go all the way through and activate force touch, but even so, maybe that's not that bad.
John:
It is easier to sort of fumble in your pocket and like...
John:
obviously the physical buttons just jam the sleep wake button or jam your finger on on the uh the the home button moving or otherwise or if it was the bottom of the screen with the virtual thing jam your finger somewhere on the bottom of the screen even if you can't feel it because now it's just a screen image but a swipe requires more finesse and for a move that you do so frequently pick up my phone put my finger on touch id unlock it open it up pick it up activate it or whatever um or just hit the home button to switch between apps or double tap to do the switcher
John:
I'm a little bit wary of my ability, my dexterity for that maneuver, that common maneuver, to feel as comfortable as it does to me to just blindly, ham-fistedly press somewhere on the phone, wherever that might be.
John:
But I think my wariness will probably, even if it is slightly worse...
John:
I think it will be made up for by the additional screen real estate.
John:
Because the screen real estate you enjoy all the time.
John:
And the additional dexterity required to pull up the swipe things, A, is probably only a problem for old people, like for younger people who are more plastic and just get used to it.
John:
But B, as often as you may do that, as often as you may activate the home button, you spend way more time staring at your front screen and scrolling through lists of stuff.
John:
So I think in the end it's going to be a trade-off, but I am a little bit wary of...
Marco:
more swipe gestures because i just think of all the swipe gestures i do on my phone now and how occasionally i'm not successful at them and that's not a pleasant experience whereas i'm pretty much always successful at pressing the home button yeah that's there there's a lot of um potential for conflicts with that gesture like any gesture that involves a big swipe from any of the sides of the phone or in any large direction on the phone
Marco:
you're going to have substantial conflict risk with that, with other things within apps or even other system gestures.
Marco:
Obviously, one of the big questions is, what do you do with Control Center?
Marco:
Is it the kind of thing where you pull up a little bit and you get Control Center and you pull up a lot and you go home or vice versa?
John:
Who knows?
John:
Have you used iOS 11?
John:
Was that weird, the same thing they have in iOS 11 with the multi?
John:
You pull up a little bit, it brings a dock, but if you keep pulling, it's the other thing.
John:
And even just on iOS 10...
John:
I'm really good at this gesture, but I found myself looking at it consciously today and realizing how good I am at making this fine distinction after lots of practice.
John:
If you pull down from the top of your phone, if I think notifications, my thumb pulls down from the top of my phone and I see notifications.
John:
If I think...
John:
launch an application that I just launched, my thumb pulls down from the top of the phone and it shows recent applications because I'm on springboard.
John:
They're two different gestures, you have to start above the edge of the screen for the for the notifications and below the edge of the screen and be on springboard for the apps.
John:
But I just do them without thinking.
John:
So I guess that's the best case scenario that this is a bottom of the phone gesture, but it's pretty picky.
John:
Like try to explain to somebody the nuances of swiping from off the edge of the screen versus just swiping sideways.
John:
I've seen many people do the wrong version of that to bad effect and not understand why they didn't pull it off.
John:
It's learnable, but again, it's subtle and it requires much more finesse than press this big circular button to bring back the place where you see all your apps.
Casey:
yeah i'm curious to see where this goes and a lot of people have been making comparisons to web os which is presumably completely reasonable but i never used a web os device so i don't know squat about it but i don't know i'm curious to see where this goes and see how it feels in in execution because i can tell you that my initial i only have ios 11 on my ipad and my initial impression of
Casey:
of putting it there was where did control center go?
Casey:
And eventually I was able to deduce, Oh, you just need to swipe further, but golly, that's, that's tough for like a normal user that isn't really thinking about these sorts of things.
Casey:
And, and I didn't care for it at all at first.
Casey:
And over time I've gotten used to it.
Casey:
The, the, the deep swipe or maybe deep isn't the best word, but the long swipe in order to get control center.
Casey:
But yeah,
Casey:
We'll see how it works on the phone.
Casey:
I am really excited about the prospect of having a phone that's sized for humans but has the screen from the Plus.
Casey:
So, you know, roughly anyway.
Casey:
So I'm very anxious about the thought of being able to buy one of those despite the fact that it's apparently going to be like over $1,000, which I'm not too thrilled about.
Casey:
But, you know, it is what it is.
Marco:
Yeah, honestly, whatever acrobatics are required to have this phone work the way we want with things like Touch ID, Face ID, screen sizes, edge swiping, all this stuff, I think it's probably going to be worth it because...
Marco:
There's been this tension in the iPhone line ever since the introduction of the plus-size phones, which is like many of us, myself included, want the screen of the plus.
Marco:
We want the bigger screen we can get, but those phones are just too big for us to comfortably carry and use and hold and everything else.
Marco:
So the idea of having a much bigger screen in the phone size that we're able to carry now, like the middle size or something very close to it,
Marco:
That's exactly what everybody wants.
Marco:
That is so desirable that I think we're going to be willing to tolerate quite a lot of weirdness and transitions and even possibly downsides to get that because that is not a small thing.
Marco:
Anyway, thanks to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Casper, Audible, and Fracture.
Marco:
We'll 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.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter...
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
Marco:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Casey:
They did it.
Marco:
So, Casey, what is your deep thought about batteries, as indicated in the show notes?
Casey:
It's actually a question, and it's probably silly, but I was thinking about this the other day, and I was wondering if I could choose, and thus I will be asking the two of you as well, if I could choose one corporation that exists today and
Casey:
to make a just night and day battery breakthrough.
Casey:
So let's assume for the sake of this hypothetical that it takes, you know, one hundredth of the time to charge whatever battery we're talking about.
Casey:
So if it's an iPhone, it takes like, you know, a few seconds or something like that.
Casey:
And if it's a Tesla, it takes maybe 10 minutes or something to go from empty to full or maybe less than that, given that the superchargers are pretty darn quick.
Casey:
So if you could pick one and only one company to make just an utterly amazing battery breakthrough, who would it be?
Casey:
And the obvious answer for the three of us is Apple because we want our iPhones to last forever.
Casey:
But I think it's bigger than that, right?
John:
I wouldn't pick Apple.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
So I never really reached a great conclusion, which is funny for me to be bringing it up.
Casey:
I feel like some auto manufacturer may be the best answer so that we could get into real honest to goodness electric cars that aren't compromise mobiles.
Casey:
To be fair, the Tesla is amazing.
Casey:
It is amazing.
Casey:
And the compromises are made in the best possible way.
Casey:
But in a lot of ways, I still feel like it's a series of compromises.
Casey:
So I feel like some auto manufacturer, maybe Tesla, would be a really great answer here.
Casey:
But I have a feeling after listening to you two, I'll be convinced that maybe there's a better choice.
Casey:
So, John, you seem pretty enthusiastic about this.
Casey:
What would you say?
Casey:
If you could pick one company to make just a tremendous battery breakthrough, who would it be?
John:
So it's not a tremendous battery breakthrough unless, because there are battery technologies that do exactly what you're saying, but unless it also works out with a cost and manufacturability and the resources it uses.
John:
So that's what you're talking about when you say breakthrough, right?
John:
And in the end, batteries are a commodity.
John:
So ideally, this breakthrough would come from academia or something not associated with the company.
John:
That would probably be the easiest and gives you your best chance not to be encumbered by stupid patents or whatever.
John:
But
John:
In the end, what I want it to be is something that is able to be produced on a large scale by some boring company that just produces things on a large scale.
John:
So maybe an existing battery manufacturer or, like, you know...
John:
general motors or siemens or like any yeah or like any you know what whatever whatever giant cooperation that makes commodities out of natural resources is the least evil right but but either way like i don't want it to be owned and controlled by a single company right and i want it to be the type of thing that everybody has access to because in the same way that everyone you know they're building up all this battery capacity for all the electric vehicles and
John:
the car industry is actually not a bad place because in general there is no there is very little technological secret sauce in in terms of the commodities like toyota will sell its hybrid powertrains to other people if they're going to pay from them someone if someone has excess capacity to manufacture some commodity type thing they will sell to other people right so i want it to be a very large company that's good at building things uh
John:
for everybody else and that it's all just like I will sell this to everybody who wants to sell it and it just becomes a commodity that everybody is able to manufacture because the breakthrough happened in academia and all the patents are freely available.
John:
I wouldn't want Apple to do it or Tesla or any other thing because I'm afraid they'd try to turn it into a competitive advantage and that's the last thing we want.
John:
We want the technology to spread everywhere far and wide.
John:
We don't want it to be
John:
oh, this lets Apple and or Tesla extract an extra six months or a year of larger profits because it takes longer for everyone else to catch up.
John:
So it's not a very satisfying answer, but it's just, you know, it's not the old world where, like, there's a breakthrough and it belongs to a company.
John:
Things like this, like battery capacity or CPUs or, like, you know, whatever, material science in general should be and generally are industry-wide.
Casey:
Marco?
Marco:
Yeah, I think John covered it pretty well.
Marco:
Obviously, the right answer is basically what John said.
Marco:
A more interesting, specific answer, if you think about what types of products or uses are really held back by battery technology today, and you can look at things like computers and phones and the tech gadgets that we all use, and in many ways...
Marco:
we're doing just fine like yeah everyone everyone could look we would all love more battery life we would all love to not have to plug in ever or to have to actually be able to use the amazing computing resources that are in these mobile devices uh frequently and all day without having to like massively throttle all the applications and very tightly control power and you know obviously it would make a big difference in things like the apple watch where like
Marco:
the application paradigms and the display uses could be so much better if we didn't have to worry so much about power constantly.
Marco:
So that's kind of like the boring answer.
Marco:
Like, yeah, make all of our tech gadgets have way better batteries.
Marco:
That would be nice.
Marco:
But we still have a great tech industry, and these gadgets are still awesome and amazingly capable, even with what we already have.
Marco:
So I think it might be more interesting to look at, like,
Marco:
where are areas in which batteries and battery technology just is not good enough to even make big shifts possible yet or ever so obviously thing you can look at transportation in other ways and you can say like obviously like airplanes currently can't be electrically powered because like the power and weight ratio is just way off like they're don't say that there are plenty of electric powered airplanes you mean airliners right
Marco:
Yeah, big airplanes, yeah.
Marco:
There's large parts of transportation that batteries are just too heavy or too big or don't have the capacity or charge too slowly.
Marco:
One area that's recently getting a little bit of traction in the electric vehicle news is trucks, long-haul trucks, like big semis and stuff.
Marco:
Lots of energy is spent on trucking, and if you can electrify trucks the way that cars are beginning to be electrified, that could have pretty substantial savings to both people who truck and also the environment around all these things.
Marco:
That could be a pretty significant fuel reduction.
Marco:
Um, and trucks have, have an issue where, you know, you need a lot of power to move a big semi truck with a big trailer and everything.
Marco:
It's just a big load and they're not particularly aerodynamic.
Marco:
Um, so you need a lot of power and also truckers can't afford to sit around for like two hours while things recharge every hundred miles.
Marco:
Like that, like they, that's not feasible for that business.
Marco:
So like you, for, for trucks to be electrified, you need, um,
Marco:
significant improvements for that to really be a thing that that could take off so like i would lean more towards areas like that where like things that like you basically just can't do efficiently with batteries as we know them today just because like the the ratios and the economics and whatever else are just completely infeasible as we know them today that that would be my answer is like
Marco:
find things that we just can't really do electrically today in a reasonable way make those more practical or more feasible so obviously things like trucks I would say probably like container ships like you know big ships in the ocean similar problem airliners like other parts of transportation that it would be nice to eliminate their emissions and or reduce their emissions at least and we just can't do that yet
John:
Don't forget clothing going in the other direction.
John:
Your battery breakthrough could be amazing, fast-charging, tiny, lightweight, inexpensive, waterproof batteries that you can weave into clothing so that you can stream Spotify from your shorts because your shorts know how to stream Spotify.
John:
That's the other direction.
John:
There's so many places where you can't use...
John:
electric power at all because batteries are too big and bulky and it would be too much of a hassle but if batteries were the size of grains of sand and had enough energy to stream spotify all day it would be in every piece of clothing you own if they were also cheap to manufacture right do i would i want my shorts to be playing music i'm not i'm not entirely sure it plays it into your ears but it's the thing that receives the radio signals and sends it through bluetooth version eight bazillion up into your your magic airpods that whatever
John:
They could use bone conduction technology and send it through my sit bones.
John:
You get your head up your ass, you hear the music just the way you want it.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
I feel like there's some humanitarian angle here that we're not considering, you know, like providing power to communities that simply don't have any.
Casey:
Like it's not even an option or it's unaffordable or whatever the case is.
John:
that's like storage of solar uh energy that's you know a battery that just battery breakthrough but just like the energy problem like if you want world peace if you could solve the energy problem and there was like free energy for everybody that would solve a lot of problems really quickly because energy is convertible as you may know into many other goods and services right and it's all like if you can solve that problem uh like it doesn't take like you know the old sort of sci-fi utopias like if you had unlimited free energy for everybody uh
John:
no one needs to work anymore like you just need to have this sort of base level technology to convert that energy into food and shelter and other types of things like it's you know but where you know that's thermodynamics has something to say about the whole free energy thing but we could you know deplete the the earth uh firefly style uh and live out live high on the hog for a while until the machines take over and enslave us all
Casey:
Well, that's a positive outlook, John.
Casey:
But Marco will be dead, so he doesn't care.