Jazzercise Boot Camp
John:
my favorite has to be jazzercise boot camp i was gonna go with aerobics boot camp but like i'm like no let me try something more relevant and jazzercise came out which is not it's the same era that's more relevant well you know like in the moment i've like come up with something better than aerobics aerobics is so 80s and jazzercise like nope didn't do it is jazzercise like a real thing that people do or have done oh jazzercise was real as a heart attack
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Is it still?
Marco:
Yes, it's still.
Marco:
What is it?
Marco:
Is it just exercising to jazz music?
Marco:
What actually is it?
Marco:
I have no idea.
John:
I didn't know it was still going on.
John:
I remember it in the 80s.
John:
I haven't seen it in years and years.
Casey:
I am almost sure there's a jazzercise clinic or whatever you would call it near us.
A clinic?
John:
Well, it's still real in the South, obviously, where they live decades behind us culturally and intellectually.
Casey:
God damn it, John.
Casey:
Why do you have to be such an asshole?
Marco:
Original workout 80s video.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Oh, wow.
Casey:
Jazzercise.com is still a thing.
Casey:
And I will add that there is a Jazzercise clinic, whatever you call it, in Richmond.
Marco:
Is this like what Richard Simmons did, basically?
John:
No, Jazzercise is a specific thing.
John:
It involves jazz or size.
Casey:
We have a St.
Casey:
Jude fundraiser update.
Casey:
At the time in which we recorded, if memory serves, we were challenging everyone to see if we could get to $20,000, I believe, was the total we wanted.
Marco:
What was it currently at when we said that?
Marco:
It was like $16,000 or $17,000, something like that, right?
Casey:
Yeah, it was like between $17,000 and $19,000, I think.
Casey:
So $20,000 was, I think, closer to $17,000.
Casey:
And $20,000 was certainly attainable.
Casey:
But I mean, $3,000 was a...
Casey:
Pretty fair bit of money.
Casey:
So we had challenged everyone, hey, can we get to 20?
Casey:
And within, I think, 24 hours, probably 12 hours of you releasing the final version of the show, we blew past 20, which is an excellent problem to have.
Casey:
So then I got on Twitter and I believe one or both of you had chimed in on this.
Casey:
And I said, OK, let's see if we can do 25.
Casey:
And I feel like 25 is a pretty good reach goal when you're just now hitting 20.
Casey:
And we blew past 25.
Casey:
At this point, I felt like I didn't want to be obnoxious about it, so I kind of cooled off on my solicitations.
Casey:
And it might have been for the best, because without any solicitations on my part, as we record, $33,258.
Casey:
Holy monkey, that's amazing.
Casey:
Pretty great.
Casey:
Obviously, this is not strictly ATP listeners, not by a long shot, but there certainly seemed to be a pretty heavy upswing in activity after the episode released.
Casey:
And that genuinely makes me extremely happy.
Casey:
The Hackett family is very dear friends of ours.
Casey:
And more importantly, this is going to help all kinds of kids with cancer.
Casey:
And you don't have to stop the donations at the end of the month.
Casey:
This episode should be released right at the end of the month.
Casey:
And that's when Stephen concentrates on it.
Casey:
But there is no reason you can't donate again or more.
Casey:
Or if you haven't donated yet, do a little now.
Casey:
So I would love to see this, you know, get even higher.
Casey:
But $33,258, that is not all ATP, but it is at least in part ATP.
Casey:
So thank you, everyone.
Casey:
who threw a little bit of your money toward trying to get rid of childhood cancer.
Casey:
That's super awesome.
John:
Are we not reminding people that if we said if they passed 20K, we would try to come up with a word to describe ATP fans?
Marco:
The best answer we got there was tabs, because there are thousands of them.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
That's the best answer?
Casey:
Definitely not.
John:
I'm not saying we should use it, but it was definitely the funniest answer.
John:
Better than ATP fans and ATP peeps, both of which are worse than tabs, but tabs is also pretty bad.
John:
I'm still thinking about it.
John:
I feel like we should fulfill this promise, but I'm not going to settle.
John:
I'm not going to be like, well, it's the best we can come up with.
John:
Nope.
John:
I'm not going to settle.
Casey:
Marco and I are already prepared to settle.
Casey:
I don't like tabs at all, but I could settle on ATP ons or ATP peeps.
John:
No, no.
John:
ATP ons is insulting and ATP peeps has too many gross things.
John:
The only one I've come up with so far.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
That's like force touch.
John:
Ooh.
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
So here's what I have come up with so far, and I'm not saying this is good, but this is the best I've got so far in my processing.
John:
Sheila's.
John:
Why?
John:
What?
John:
Is this a reference that I'm missing?
John:
So Sheila's is the generic word, I believe some Australian can tell me, for women in Australia, for a woman in Australia, Sheila, a woman or a girl, right?
John:
And Sheila's, it doesn't mean that you're a female listener.
John:
It's just a generic term.
John:
It's gender neutral.
John:
Also the tank in red versus blue.
John:
Is it?
John:
I don't remember that series a long time ago.
John:
Anyway, but that's not a great one, but it's the best I've come up with so far.
John:
And it's mostly just me being angry about Tim's on Hello Internet.
John:
That's 100% what it is.
John:
But I also think it's a fun exercise to allow a group of what we consider to be almost entirely men who listen to the show...
John:
Just stew in the idea of being referred to by a word that implies a gender that doesn't match yours.
John:
And that you're just supposed to eat it and say, well, it's a gender neutral term.
John:
It's fine.
Marco:
I respect the effort.
Marco:
Yeah, same here.
Marco:
And I agree with you on principle.
Marco:
However, it's also terrible.
Marco:
Agreed.
Marco:
It's not a good name for listeners, unfortunately.
Marco:
So far, all of the options that we have seen so far are terrible.
Marco:
So I think it's probably safe to say we probably just won't be naming our listeners anything generic like this.
Marco:
Because every option people suggested was awful.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
I know.
Casey:
Anyway, if we come up with a good one, we will.
Casey:
If we wanted a name that really is gender agnostic, we could call all the listeners Casey's.
Marco:
That's true.
John:
I know Casey's of both genders.
John:
No, because I think Casey has a connotation.
John:
Besides, they're not all Casey's.
John:
What if they identify as a Marco?
John:
What if they're not a Miranda?
John:
What if they're a Samantha?
Oh,
Casey:
God, I understood that reference.
Marco:
Casey represents everybody.
Marco:
We've been told on a number of occasions that Casey represents, well, they use a gender term usually for this, but they say Casey represents the everyman.
John:
They usually say the everywoman, don't they?
John:
Everywoman is a gender neutral term.
Casey:
who knows but i understand the point you're driving at marco which is that most people will say i wish i was marco or i wish i was john but in actuality i'm casey which is both flattering and kind of depressing all at once people wish they were casey now too because he's got a fancy suv and a bmw that works sometimes that's so harsh that is so harsh john it is too soon does it currently work what's the current state
Casey:
I have driven it only once in the last week, and that is going to be discussed.
John:
We have after-show stuff to discuss about that.
John:
Yes.
John:
Okay.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
If you looked at the show notes, Marco, there are some after-show things to discuss.
Casey:
Anyway, so we should continue with our follow-up.
Casey:
It's funny.
Casey:
This episode of this show is really a rollercoaster, kids, because I was on the highest of highs with regard to the St.
Casey:
Jude donations.
Casey:
However, now I'm at the lowest of lows because I was hoping that nobody would discover, which I understand this is preposterous.
John:
Why did you hope this?
Casey:
I was hoping no one would discover that the Apple TV 4K does indeed have a fan.
Casey:
And of course it was going to be discovered.
Casey:
I understand that.
Casey:
But like in my fantasy world, I was hoping that nobody would know or that John would never find out.
Casey:
He would go on the Todd Vaziri full media blackout with regard to the Apple TV 4K fan.
Casey:
Why would I do that?
Casey:
because I bet you it is so damn quiet that you'll never hear it.
Casey:
But now that you know it's there, oh, you're going to hear it because you know.
John:
I will be honest about it and we'll see.
John:
So this is far from last week, last week where I said the ATP 4K has no fan.
John:
Why did I say that?
John:
Because I asked on the show before that, I asked, hey, can anybody answer these questions for me?
John:
Because I had asked around and no one had been able to answer me.
John:
And the person who sent me this answer claimed to work at Apple.
John:
And I believe this person, because we get a lot of email from people who work at Apple, and they said, Apple TV 4K has no fan.
John:
They also said the stuff about 24 frames per second that happened to be correct.
John:
And so I wrote the person back.
John:
I'm like, well, oops.
John:
Looks like you were wrong on that one.
John:
And this person didn't say, ha, just kidding.
John:
I don't really work at Apple.
John:
I was just pulling your leg.
John:
What they said instead was...
John:
uh the the same thing that marco and jason snell said when i asked them about it they both had apple tv 4ks in their possession and asked them hey guys does it have a fan and this was also this was before i fix it to the teardown so like yes i searched online to try to answer your question just to make sure like has anyone done a teardown to just verify this and there hadn't been one yet so the best they could do is like i'm not gonna i'm not gonna open mine up so my god let me let me just guess let me look at it you know
John:
or listen to it anyway i was casey to your point i've been checking the ifixit site since like oh i know right after right after the keynote because i'm like maybe someone got review units maybe ifixit is tearing them apart you know because i i was actually actively looking at ifixit like every day to see for a teardown but i knew two people who had this thing so i asked them to confirm and they both either said
John:
i i don't think so i can't tell or it just doesn't seem like there's a fan and so when i had the apple employees say definitively there's no fan i believe and this apple employees excuse was that they couldn't tell that they couldn't they they thought there was no fan because they couldn't hear anything because it was totally silent so they're like yeah my bad so anyway it's suspicious because when you look at the bottom of it it has a round pattern of air holes the previous one had a solid bottom it seemed to have no ventilation at all and that's why this came up by the way because i was tipped off
Marco:
either during or right after the keynote of a public document on apple site that showed like the the line art like view of the thing showing the measurements and stuff and it showed the holes and it's like oh holes what does that mean here i was like i was i was using the apple tv like letting it play content and i lift it up and i i hear nothing i like i muted the sound so i so it'd be a quiet room lift it up i hear nothing i put my hand under the vents to try to see if i could feel air movement
Marco:
I felt nothing.
Marco:
And I was like, well, what are these holes for?
Marco:
I mean, maybe it's just passively cooling by convection using these holes like with a big heat sink inside.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But I'm like, I really don't think there's a fan here.
Marco:
But it is weird.
Marco:
There's these holes in a circular pattern here.
Marco:
That would be perfect if you had a fan behind it.
Marco:
But I could feel or hear nothing.
John:
Yeah, and I'm not quite sure, even after seeing the teardown, a convection or a passive cooling with holes, that makes perfect sense.
John:
A lot of things have been done like that, but there's no holes on the top of this, right?
John:
Only holes on the bottom?
Marco:
Yeah, it seems like there's no intake holes.
Marco:
So my theory here, if you've ever done any kind of PC building with heat sink design, you know that, or if you have a better grasp on science than me, you probably already know this as well, but you know that a passive, just a heat sink with no fan on it,
Marco:
When you compare the cooling power of that to a heatsink that has even a little slight bit of air movement being pushed over it, it's a huge difference.
Marco:
You can have a fan running at incredibly low speed, and that will make a big difference from having no fan at all.
Marco:
So I'm guessing this fan is probably dynamically controlled, first of all.
Marco:
So I bet when I felt nothing under there, I bet it actually wasn't spinning, or it was spinning at a ridiculously low speed.
Marco:
And maybe only if you're like really pushing it hard, like using 3D stuff in a game, maybe that's when it spins up.
Marco:
But like playing 4K video, it was not doing anything noticeable.
Marco:
So I'm guessing it's just a very low speed fan that might have even not been spinning at all during that during video playback.
John:
I bet it's always spinning, but that's just a guess.
John:
But anyway, when I get this thing, I will tell you if I can hear it.
John:
And the reason you should believe me, that'll be honest, is because Marco sent me an airport router that he didn't want anymore.
John:
That has a fan in it.
John:
And I was like, oh, fan.
John:
I knew it had a fan in it.
John:
I'm like, I don't know if I want this thing with the fan.
John:
They sent it to me.
John:
And as I think I said on the show when I got it, it has a fan.
John:
But the only way I can hear it is if I literally shove my ear like so it is touching the bottom of the device.
John:
that is the only and i can hear it when i do that i can hear that it's turning but in every other scenario i cannot hear not like oh i can hear it faintly you can turn off every device in my house close all the windows make sure everything is dead silent and i can be two feet away from it and i can't hear a damn thing so if the apple tv is even remotely as quiet because it is like 10 feet away from me at my in my tv entertainment center it'll be fine
John:
That said, if I put it up to my ear and actually physically touch to my ear, I expect to be able to hear it if the fan is moving.
John:
So we'll see.
John:
I'm going to get mine.
John:
Mine's delivering next week.
John:
So next show, I will be able to give you an answer.
John:
i'm skeptical i feel like you've been but the thing is like what i'm getting at is i won't care if i can hear it when i put up to my ear because i can't hear what if i can't hear it when it's the same thing i don't care about my airport thing i don't care that i can i don't i don't use it shoved up to my ear it's not you know it's not a communicator that i have to jam into my ear it's way over there so i'm perfectly happy to have fans that i literally can't hear
Casey:
We'll see.
Casey:
I expect the truth, the whole truth, and nothing but the truth.
John:
I will give it to you.
John:
I was suggesting to Jason and Marco, like, stick a toothpick in there and something hits it.
John:
Wow.
John:
That's not a bad idea.
John:
That's a great idea.
John:
This is before they had the teardown.
John:
I'm like, look, is there a fan or is there no fan?
John:
Is there a fan that you can't hear or is there literally no fan?
John:
And now we know the answer is actually a fan there.
John:
We just don't know whether it's spinning all the time, yada, yada.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Ah.
Casey:
So tell me about downloading movies from iTunes.
Casey:
Is that a thing on this box?
John:
Not 4K ones, apparently.
John:
This is from Apple's support document.
John:
You can download a local copy of an HD movie.
John:
By the way, I hate the fact that HD doesn't refer to 4K because what is 4K if not high definition or even higher definition anyway?
John:
What is hi-fi?
John:
Yeah, yeah.
John:
And you might be able to download this.
John:
This is the direct quote.
John:
You can download a local copy of HD movie and you might be able to download HDR and Dolby Vision versions.
John:
what do you mean i might like maybe you'll let me maybe you won't that's from apple support document it says you might be able to do this yes some maybe some are down right and it says then finally the last clause but you can't download a 4k version now why can't i download a 4k version i have some theories on this the one theory that people have put forward is like oh the 4k versions are too big and the as previously discussed and lamented theoretical fixed size where you can download stuff is not big enough to fit a single 4k movie or it would take up all the space right um
John:
It's like, oh, there's too big to download.
John:
I don't think that's the case, especially if they're, they're HEVC, they shouldn't be that much, you know, they shouldn't be like 50 gigabytes versus five.
John:
They should be bigger than the HD ones, but not like so big that you can't download a single one of them.
John:
Although maybe they just say, look, one of them is so big, it would take up all your space and we don't want to do that.
John:
Right.
John:
Um,
John:
another possibility is that uh as always you gotta always have this as a possibility is that uh content owners are stupid and they're like no we can't let them download the 4k version because then people might be able to pirate our movies and as long as we stop them from downloading the 4k drm uh encumbered version of our movies to their apple tvs there's no way anyone will ever pirate this movie and we'll be safe from piracy so please don't let anybody download like that's definitely it that's definitely the answer
John:
It's such a dumb thing.
John:
In this day and age where people... Anyway, we don't know why, but the bottom line is if you were thinking that you were going to be able to buy the big Apple TV so that you could download a 4K movie and then watch it offline on your Apple TV, you will not be able to because the Apple TV will not download the 4K versions of movies to local storage.
John:
It will only stream it.
John:
That's dumb.
John:
I don't like it.
John:
So once again, why is the 64 gig version...
John:
like what well you know games they upped the limits by the way on games it used to be like you could download like 200 megabytes and then you could download chunks of on-demand content they upped it way more so then you can download like a gigabyte or more or something anyway uh in theory you could make very large games in apple's fantasy world of the apple tv as an actual gaming console you could fill the whole thing with games
Casey:
So tell me about boot camp because Randy Garcia has written in to point out to us that as we, I guess it was John, I think brought up air power as, as a kind of military term that's being used by Apple as a product name, which by the way, somebody, did we talk about this last episode?
Casey:
Somebody said it should have been called apple juice.
Casey:
Somebody on Twitter said this like right when it was announced.
Casey:
And I think that would have been a terrible, but much better name at the same time.
Casey:
That would have been hilarious.
Casey:
But anyway, so,
Casey:
So Randy Garcia has written in to say that boot camp is another military term that Apple has used.
Casey:
And somebody, maybe Randy, has provided a deeply troubling video of Steve Jobs many years ago trying to act.
Casey:
Do you want to tell us about this, John?
John:
Yeah, so the boot camp is the one I hadn't thought of.
John:
It's a good call because I couldn't recall a single other Apple product that had a military term in it.
John:
Although I would say the boot camp has got to have been co-opted and made secular.
John:
Secular, sort of non-military, not secular.
John:
Civilian?
John:
Civilian, yeah.
John:
Made civilian in a way that air power has not because now you have like...
John:
You know, they have jazzercise boot camps and programming boot camps and everything's a boot camp.
John:
Like it's basically just a training place.
John:
And I guess they're still riffing on the military one.
John:
But anyway, the other thing is I disqualify because it is internal only company communication.
John:
And I don't know if you've if you work at a big company, you've probably experienced.
John:
communication targeted made by corporations targeted at their own employees and they're usually pretty awful and you may think that apple's an exception but i can tell you that apple in the 80s and 90s definitely was not an exception there is a vast collection of internal audio and video content created by apple for apple's employees only
John:
that is cringe worthy and hilarious and some of it's good fun too right it's usually just a bunch of engineers or a bunch of people in hr making a video with like 80s video technology like they didn't they didn't have an imac with imovie on it they had like you know betamax and vhs and probably fancier professional video stuff and they didn't have actors they had just like their employees
John:
And I think the one in question is Steve Jobs pretending to be, who is it?
John:
Is it FDR or Roosevelt?
Casey:
I believe that's right.
Casey:
I think it was FDR.
John:
Anyway, you can watch any YouTube if you want to be sad about internal corporate communications.
John:
But rest assured, Apple was no exception and probably continues to be no exception.
John:
They can make cool things externally, but their internal facing corporate videos are not quite at the same standard.
Casey:
Our final piece of follow-up today is from a friend of the show, Sam of Welsamid, who is of the Wheelbearings podcast.
Casey:
This is all going to come up again later in the after show.
Casey:
This was with regard to our comments about the Acura TLX that I had driven – or excuse me, had ridden in.
Casey:
He wrote to us to say, with regard to the comments about the DCT –
Casey:
The torque converter is mounted between the flywheel and the dual clutch pack and is intended to provide some torque multiplication and smooth out the shifts a bit.
Casey:
It's work, but it's nothing to get worked up about.
Casey:
And he provided a link to some more info.
Casey:
That strikes me as super freaking weird.
Casey:
Like the whole reason I tend to hate automatics is because of that, like that mushy feeling that a torque converter brings.
Casey:
And I understand the motivation here.
Casey:
The motivation makes sense, but it's just you're taking away the one thing I love about a DCT, which is that I feel it feels more direct to me than a traditional automatic.
Marco:
The one benefit I could see here is that when you're driving a DCT, the shifting between first and second, when you're going at low speeds and you're using first and second gear, that can be very jerky, just like if you do it in a stick.
Marco:
If you're selling into a market that is accustomed to automatics,
Marco:
that might feel too jerky to them.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
If you're selling to stick people, it's going to feel perfectly awesome and normal.
Marco:
But if you're, if you're selling to automatic people, I see why they would do that.
Marco:
I agree with you though, that like at that point, why not just use, you know, a really good eight or nine speed auto.
Marco:
And maybe that's why their premium option is just a nine or eight speed auto.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
But again, I would prefer a DCT that's just a DCT without anything in front of it.
Marco:
But I do see for the market they're selling why they do that.
Marco:
But it just doesn't make sense to me that they would bother with a DCT at all at that point.
John:
I think there's a limitation of current DCTs that they can't be that smooth down at low speeds.
John:
Because if someone using a manual can be.
John:
They just slip the clutch more.
John:
You can start and stop as smooth as you want.
John:
And apparently that's not within the realm of...
John:
Not within the functional envelope of modern DCTs, most of which are tuned to shift very fast, like at the, you know, for at the higher speeds, like not so much tuned for creeping out of a parking lot and rounding the corner on a residential road and you get a little bit of a bump.
John:
And the TLX, again, trying to split the difference between the TSX and the TL.
John:
and erring on the side of being boring as always um went for the went for like the most important thing is not to jostle the occupants so they took a sporty transmission and put a little bit of slush in between it and the wheels to smooth things out at low speeds it maybe would be better if like if that if the torque converter wasn't a factor at higher speeds or anything but either way like it's such a sort of frankenstein setup that um
John:
Yeah, it does seem much cleaner to either have, look, you either got an automatic or you got a stick or a DCT and they all have their own behaviors and trying to combine them into sort of a hybrid suspension with the best of all worlds is just kind of papering over the flaws.
John:
Like it used to be when we had single clutch automated manuals that they were super rough, right?
John:
uh and there was slow shifting and very jerky and a dual clutch really helped because you could have the other gear set ready to go and swap very quickly without the harshness right um but apparently there's still problems at low speed and so i feel like in you know another five ten years they work out the details on the dcts um maybe they won't need a hack like this but anyway tlx is not a great car anyway you should there are a lot of better choices in that price range
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
We've now lost all of the listeners who don't really care about cars.
Casey:
So sorry, everyone.
Casey:
You can come back now.
Casey:
We're back, and we're going to talk Ask ATP.
Casey:
So let's begin with Colin Weir, who writes, John's rant about tech people forgetting that betas are betas reminded me of a question I have.
Casey:
A lot of the times on iOS betas, I will find bugs in apps that I report to developers to say, hey, this doesn't work on the iOS 11 beta.
Casey:
I usually get a response along the lines of, yes, this is a beta.
Casey:
Betas aren't supported.
Casey:
And then I'll often see rants from people like TapBots Paul complaining about people saying things are broken on betas.
Casey:
But an inherent part of the beta experience is reporting bugs.
Casey:
In fact, that's the reason betas exist.
Casey:
So if I want to be a good citizen and beta user and report issues I find, how can I do it without annoying developers?
Marco:
This is pretty simple, really.
Marco:
So when you're on a beta, keep in mind that in some cases the developer has not had time to fix the bug that you are reporting because the beta just came out and they got it the same time you did.
Marco:
In a lot of cases, the developer can't fix the bug that you're reporting until the GM SDK comes out, which could be months later, right before the version is released to the public.
Marco:
So mainly because we can't submit builds to the App Store that use the beta SDK until the GM is out.
Marco:
The App Store won't accept them.
Marco:
So if you're telling someone that this is broken in the form of like a complaint, like I demand that you fix this quickly, damn it.
Marco:
That's really frustrating for developers to hear because they probably know about that already and they probably can't fix it yet or haven't had a chance to fix it yet.
Marco:
And it doesn't really matter because it's still a beta.
Marco:
if you are trying to leave a nasty review in some ways.
Marco:
Fortunately, iOS has prevented this in recent versions.
Marco:
Usually, you aren't able to leave reviews from betas anymore, from beta OSs anymore, which is nice.
Marco:
That would also be a thing not to do.
Marco:
But if you're just telling somebody in a civil way, like...
Marco:
Hey, there's this bug.
Marco:
I thought you might want to know about it.
Marco:
That's totally fine.
Marco:
And we, as developers, need that and appreciate that.
Marco:
That's good.
Marco:
So as long as it's not a one-star review or using the tone or phrasing of a complaint that you expect it to be fixed all of a sudden, it's fine.
John:
Well, I think the key part here is like, how do I be a good beta user?
John:
What are you a beta user of?
John:
If you're a beta user of the operating system, you should be reporting bugs to Apple, not to third-party developers.
John:
The only way you should be reporting bugs to third-party developers is if you are on like the Overcast beta and Marco wants to know, here's a beta of Overcast, how does it work?
John:
And in that case, Marco would probably tell you,
John:
I want you to test this beta on a released version of the operating system, right?
John:
Because no third party developers are going to support their applications on unreleased versions of the operating system.
John:
They may use it themselves and ask their beta testers to use it, but they inevitably want to know
John:
How is this going to work on the real release version?
John:
So if you're not a beta tester of the application you're reporting bugs on, you don't have to feel like you have to be a good beta citizen because you're not on that beta.
John:
If you're beta testing iOS, the way to be a good citizen is report bugs you find in the OS.
John:
Now, does Apple want to know that some third-party application you have doesn't work on it?
John:
Probably not, but...
John:
you know it's a giant black hole throw over whatever bug reports you want let them do with what they want but i would say what apple is looking for are bugs in the operating system itself of which there are usually plenty and if you want to be a good beta system and you want to report bugs
John:
do that right but and if you want to report bugs on third-party ios apps talk to the developer and say hey can i be on your beta program the next time you have a beta ready send it to me and i will try it and report bugs and they would appreciate that everything john just said is wrong thank you wow what are you trying to say you don't you don't want people to report bugs in overcast or you want them to report uh bugs about how your application doesn't work on beta os's i
Marco:
The idea that I would only want bug reports from Overcast beta users is completely wrong.
John:
Well, no, but like I'm saying, if you want to be a good beta citizen, like they're not a beta citizen if they're not using, like how would they even get to Overcast beta if they're not on your beta?
John:
You see what I'm saying?
Marco:
No, but like if you're using my app on a beta OS and you run into a bug, I would like to know about that.
Marco:
Chances are I probably already know about it, but what if I don't?
Marco:
You know, my beta groups are really small, and most of the time I don't have a current beta running.
Marco:
So I want to know about that stuff.
Marco:
And the idea that you should only report bugs on the OS if you're testing an OS beta is totally wrong.
Marco:
I don't know any developer who wouldn't want those reports.
John:
Well, that's how you'd be a good beta citizen because you're testing a beta of the OS.
John:
TapBots Paul apparently doesn't want to hear your complaints about their broken things because they know they're broken on the beta OS.
Marco:
Well, no, but again, I think it's a difference of tone.
Marco:
It's a difference of like, hey, just so you know this is broken versus I demand that you fix this.
Marco:
That's a very different tone.
Marco:
And one of them is helpful and one of them is not.
John:
i think even just reporting especially if it's a well-known bug or reporting it like there's almost no way to say it if it's if you were the 900th person telling somebody that their app crashes on launch in the ios 11 beta like there's almost no way you can say that it's not going to eventually drive people crazy and i feel like i i don't think that's a particularly useful thing to be doing like especially if it's something like crashes on launch if the developer doesn't know that they don't care about the app anymore and it's hopeless right uh
Marco:
chances are good they know it crashes on launch and they're addressing it well what if it only crashes on launch on a phone you don't use i don't know you know like there's that's why like these i i can't think of a situation where i would not want those reports even if i'm getting a hundred of them then then i'll tweet from the account saying hey just so you know i know about this thanks for your reports then you could not report the same thing again but like you know if if something like that happens i want to know to be a good citizen how about don't expect a response that's like you know
Marco:
if the if the developer is getting tons of them then they won't be able to respond to all of them but like yeah by by all means please tell us we need like that's the point of betas even if they aren't our software in beta even if it's the os software in beta we still need to know that kind of stuff i think we need to survey more developers to ask them if they really want people testing their applications on beta os's and giving them bug reports because i have almost always heard the opposite
John:
that please do not do not send me reports of how my application doesn't work on a beta version of the os because it's not like it's almost like a support function don't contact me through support channels if you're not on my beta to tell me that my application doesn't work in a beta os like they just don't want to hear it and maybe they're just frustrated maybe you're right it's just about tone and all i ever hear is the frustrated complaint and really it's super valuable for them and they just eventually reach their limit and snap but i've always heard the opposite
John:
Not that I'm sending these reports, by the way.
John:
You'd save them for the podcast.
John:
I'm being a good beta citizen.
John:
I don't even send Apple the bug reports.
Casey:
Mike Paul writes to ask, do you think APFS will be supported on Fusion Drives and future builds of High Sierra?
Casey:
So chief summarizer in chief, summary.
Casey:
APFS was supported on fusion drives, which are these kind of weirdo scenarios where you have a spinning disk and a SSD that is kind of melded to be one volume.
Casey:
I'm sure that's not going to satisfy John, but for the purposes of this conversation, that's all you need to know.
Casey:
And so they were supported in betas of High Sierra.
Casey:
And then when the GM happened, oh, just kidding, there is no Fusion Drive support for you.
Casey:
So you're going to have to reformat to HFS Plus if you want to go to High Sierra.
Casey:
So the question is, do you think, I guess, John, do you think that this will be supported in future builds?
John:
Yes, I do, because Apple has shipped a lot of Fusion drives, and I think they don't want AWS Plus hanging around, and they almost had it working, so they'll eventually get it working.
John:
I expect it.
John:
What is future?
John:
How many points do we have to go through?
John:
How difficult is it?
John:
I don't know, but I do expect it.
John:
I'll be surprised if it's not supported.
Marco:
Also, Craig Federighi sent an email to somebody allegedly saying, yes, it's coming in a future version, basically.
Marco:
There you go.
Casey:
Oh, fair enough.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Well, that's it for Ask ATP.
Casey:
As always, you can tweet your questions with the hashtag Ask ATP, and our magic spreadsheet.
Casey:
We'll find them and pick them up, and then we will answer them if we think they're good enough.
Casey:
No pressure.
Marco:
With continued apologies to the Upgrade podcast, where we stole this from.
John:
We don't need to apologize.
John:
They've been amply credited.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Jamf Now.
Marco:
Jamf Now helps you manage your Apple devices from anywhere.
Marco:
When you first start a business, it's pretty easy to keep track of your own stuff, your own computer, your own phone, your own iPad.
Marco:
But as you grow and you start to buy more tech for your employees and you start to have more employees, it gets really hard to keep track and manage everyone's Macs, iPhones, and iPads.
Marco:
Figuring out, for instance, how to secure the iPad that a salesperson just lost can be pretty hard, especially when you aren't even on site if you're a distributed company.
Marco:
Jamf Now makes that and a whole lot more much easier than before.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So it sounds like all three households have received new toys in the last week, although not all three hosts.
Casey:
So the Apple Watch Series 3 is out.
Casey:
They have been received as of this past Friday by those who had pre-ordered basically at the obscene hour of three in the morning.
Casey:
If you live on the East Coast, like all three of us do.
Casey:
So all three households have received them.
Casey:
Marco, you and or Tiff have one.
Casey:
How many did you get for the two of you all?
Marco:
Just one.
Marco:
Tiff decided she didn't want one.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
And then I got one for myself and actually Aaron got a non-sell one for her.
John:
Although for Aaron and Tiff, by the way, what were their reasons for saying they don't want to sell?
Marco:
Well, Tiff decided she didn't want the watch at all.
John:
Okay.
John:
Well, that settles that.
Casey:
For Aaron, there is never a time she expects to be that far away from her phone to justify spending the extra money each month.
Casey:
And Aaron, Aaron likes her watch, I think it's fair to say, but doesn't love her watch.
Casey:
She views it mostly as a second screen in terms of notifications and very little else.
Casey:
And so because of that, she didn't seem to think it was worth the extra money each month.
Casey:
And if she knew she was never, ever, ever going to pay for cell service, then why bother paying the extra money for the cell radio?
John:
But she did want a new watch, then.
John:
She's got a new one just because her current watch is slow?
John:
Or you thought she should just get one so you feel less bad about getting an expensive new watch?
Casey:
All of the above.
Casey:
Her current watch, or her previous now watch, was a Series Zero, as was mine, and it was slow, and she has a 38mm, so the battery life was getting to be comically bad over the course of two years, which is to some degrees to be expected.
Casey:
And I was spending a whole bunch of money on my fancy new watch, and I figured, you know, if I'm going to get a fancy new watch, then she should get a fancy new watch.
John:
But the solution to spending money and feeling guilty about it is just spend more money.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Well, yeah.
Casey:
This is the Marco approach, and now the Casey approach, it seems.
John:
Have I taught you nothing?
Casey:
And so anyway, so yeah, so your wife has or has not received hers yet.
John:
She has not received it yet.
John:
It's a birthday gift.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
So I won't be able to ask you about your experience then, but I will start by asking Marco, because I suspect you will not have too much to say about this.
Casey:
Famous last words.
Casey:
What has your experience been with your Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE?
Marco:
I have not really used the LTE yet.
Marco:
Because I mainly got the LTE so I could build Overcast with it when the API lets me do that.
Marco:
And I hope that is soon.
Marco:
But that is the main reason I got it.
Marco:
Because all of my customers are asking for it.
Marco:
So I figured I need that for testing.
Marco:
But for the rest of the Series 3, it's fantastic.
Marco:
The way that the keynote phrased the speed improvements...
Marco:
It didn't sound like it was that big of a difference.
Marco:
It sounded like it was an incremental speed update.
Marco:
It's not.
Marco:
It's a massive speed upgrade from even the Series 2, which themselves were massive speed upgrades from the original Series 0.
Marco:
If you still have a Series Zero and you are at all thinking about upgrading, upgrade.
Marco:
It is an incredibly fast device now.
Marco:
Not like phone speed.
Marco:
It's not that you're never waiting for anything.
Marco:
But compared to where it was, it's a huge speed upgrade.
Casey:
yep i would agree with that and i'd also like to quickly double down and say that the battery life improvement for me anyway has also been tremendous so i completely agree with you if you're listening to this and you have a series zero watch and that's the only one i have experience with i can't speak for series one or series two if you have a series zero watch and you're thinking yeah maybe it's time it's time because this is way better both speed wise as marco said
Casey:
And in my experience so far in battery life as well.
Marco:
Keep in mind also with battery life.
Marco:
I was thinking about this the other day.
Marco:
The Apple Watch is so dependent on having adequate battery life.
Marco:
If your watch dies in the middle of the day, that really makes it a lot less useful to you.
Marco:
Like if it can't make it the whole, and this is one of the reasons why Apple is so conservative about how it spends its power budget.
Marco:
It's one of the reasons why the OS is so limited, why apps are so limited.
Marco:
Because, you know, if your phone dies, you know, three quarters of the way through a day, you can plug it in somewhere for a few minutes and then get back to using it again.
Marco:
With your watch, that's really inconvenient.
Marco:
Take it off, put it somewhere.
Marco:
You probably don't even have a lot of extra chargers for it because they're this separate thing.
Marco:
It's kind of a pain.
Marco:
It's this giant magnetic disc thing.
Marco:
Most people are going to have one charger.
Marco:
It's going to be next to their bed at night.
Marco:
If your battery life sinks down to the point where it can't make it a full day, that dramatically reduces your happiness and the usefulness of that device.
Marco:
So, because these batteries degrade over time, I suspect that a lot of people are going to be replacing them about every two to three years, even if they're totally happy with them, just because the battery will start fading, and it'll cross the point where it's no longer making it through a full day for them, and that's going to suck.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
If you have a Series 0, and this describes you, which I've heard that this is roughly the time that's really starting to happen with a lot of the Series 0s, where the battery is just not making it anymore.
Marco:
If you have a Series 0, and you are at all thinking about upgrading, this is a good time to do that, and these are great.
Marco:
I'm incredibly happy with it.
John:
Yep, agreed.
John:
I'm probably going to have to upgrade eventually too, because even though I don't wear my Apple watch, except for a few weeks a year, I do wear it a few weeks a year and my series zero it's, I mean, the battery's okay, but it is, it's, it's in rough shape.
John:
Like it's so angry at me because I don't wear it.
John:
I just leave it on its charger sitting on my dresser or whatever.
John:
I tried to upgrade it to watchOS 4, which took me like three days to complete because my phone wouldn't connect to it or it would tell me it's downloading.
John:
It would say download over Zoom when you're connected to Wi-Fi.
John:
When I was totally on Wi-Fi, I'm like a foot from the Wi-Fi router and everything is connected to Wi-Fi.
John:
I would say I can't connect to the phone, but the watch could ping the phone and say it was connected.
John:
i rebooted both devices in the end what i had to do was wipe the entire watch and start over and restore from a backup that's the only way and then i'm restoring from a watch os3 backup and then once that got on then finally i could upgrade to four which still takes a year and a day to actually run but i was i was glad to see that's that big circular progress bar and the four hour wait for it to upgrade so anyway now my my
John:
series zero apple watch is running the new os but i think i will actually buy a new one i just i'm i really don't want to because i really like the stainless steel one and it costs a tremendous amount of money and i rarely wear it but in the end i probably will get a new one not this year but like
John:
next year or the year after what will happen is i'll go to wwdc or go on vacation one year and my watch won't make it through the day like marco said and i'll be like well that's it i'd like either either i don't have a bubble watch anymore i have to buy a new one and in the end i'll probably buy a new one but not this year although who knows maybe maybe seeing my wife use her cool cellular dick tracy watch it'll convince me that i should get one but i doubt it
John:
Yeah, I mean, hey, if you get one, you can switch back to your flip phone.
Casey:
Oh, God.
John:
I don't think that's going to happen.
John:
I think I still have my flip phone somewhere, but I can't go back again.
John:
Oh, my word.
Marco:
And one other thing on the speed, too.
Marco:
I would say, again, it doesn't make it a super fast device, but I think this is the first Apple Watch that's not too slow.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree with all of that.
Casey:
So I got my Apple Watch Series 3 late-ish Friday.
Casey:
I typically go and I do my exercise on Monday, Tuesday, and Friday, generally speaking.
Casey:
So it wasn't until this past Monday and Tuesday that I was able to try going for a run without my phone, which is kind of weird.
Casey:
I mean, I've only been running semi-consistently for a few months.
Casey:
It's not like I'm some expert forever-long runner.
Casey:
And even in just a few months, I've gotten used to having my phone either in my hand or
Casey:
uh careening out of my bum bag as i'm trying to put it in said bag which is why my screen broke or uh bouncing around on my tailbone as as it's in my uh sort of kind of fanny pack hello the uk you mean your sit bone yes yes that's totally it except not at all but anyway um the the point is it was it was very weird but immediately very freeing not to have to carry my phone which is super cool
Casey:
So I put in my AirPods.
Casey:
I had previously downloaded some music onto my watch, connected my AirPods to my watch.
Casey:
And I started listening to music, started a run and run keeper and went on my run.
Casey:
And it was really, really awesome.
Casey:
There are some problems with this, though.
Casey:
Number one, I don't want to listen to music.
Casey:
I want to listen to podcasts.
Casey:
I can barely keep up with all my podcasts as it is.
Casey:
And running is a really great time for me to plow through, you know, maybe one episode or an episode and a half or whatever of some of my favorite shows.
Casey:
And if I don't bring my phone, then I'm not listening to podcasts.
Casey:
And that's a bummer.
Casey:
So if only I knew the guy that uses my, that writes my podcast client app, whatever of choice, maybe I could put in a good word with him about how I'd really love some Overcast watch support.
Casey:
And I understand what the problems are.
Casey:
And you wrote a really, really great post about it.
Casey:
This week's Under the Radar.
Casey:
You talked about kind of the same thing.
Casey:
So as much as I joke, I'm not actually beating you up about it because I know your hands are tied.
Casey:
But please, please, Apple, give Marco the tools.
Casey:
Give Marco the tools so we can have this nice thing.
Casey:
We just want nice things.
Casey:
But anyway, we've already talked about the battery life.
Casey:
Battery life is tremendous as compared to previous.
Casey:
I have gone on not only a couple of runs with the watch, but also I have taken Declan to the little park that's within our neighborhood a few times.
Casey:
And generally speaking, in the past, I've brought my phone, which means I'm often tempted to look at like Twitter or Instagram or whatever instead of playing with Declan because I'm a terrible father.
Casey:
And not having my phone with me makes it much harder to look at Twitter or Instagram or what have you because I don't have those apps on my watch.
Casey:
And that's been really awesome.
Casey:
What has been less awesome is replying to text messages and things like that because it seems that about one time in three, the text message just doesn't send.
Casey:
And when I say text message, I mean both iMessage and text message.
Casey:
So that's kind of a bummer, kind of a big bummer.
Casey:
I don't know if that's a software problem.
Casey:
I don't know if it's a hardware problem.
Casey:
I'm guessing it's a software thing.
Casey:
But that really bums me out.
Casey:
The other thing that's been a little bit troubling is I have seen a very small version of the bug that about half of the reviewers hit.
Casey:
Insofar as I run, I'm running in my neighborhood, and
Casey:
And at one point or another, I will pass the house because I start a little bit past the house.
Casey:
I run for a while past the house again, and that's where I end.
Casey:
I end where I started.
Casey:
And I realized as I was coming to the end of my run, which is close to the house but past the house,
Casey:
I was attempting to do something.
Casey:
I don't recall exactly what it was.
Casey:
Maybe I was just seeing what the status was because this is all new to me and I'm trying to figure out, okay, how long does it take to get on the cell radio and when does it fall off the cell radio, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
I noticed as I ran past the house, it picked up my Wi-Fi.
Casey:
But then it tried to cling to it longer than it really should have, which I don't really blame the device because it's, of course, going to try to power off the cell radio.
Casey:
And it's, of course, going to try to hang on to the Wi-Fi because that radio is far less power expensive.
Casey:
to to to keep on but what ended up happening was for the last you know i don't know 300 yards of my run i had no connectivity because it was still trying to find the wi-fi that i had already run past and so that was kind of a bummer in general though i don't have that problem i leave the cell i leave the software uh for the cell radio enabled and so and what i mean by that is it can go on cellular anytime it wants and i have not paid any attention to like turning that off or anything like that
Casey:
And 99% of the time, my phone is right there, so it wouldn't power the cell radio on anyway.
Casey:
But it's been maintenance-free in that regard, which is really nice.
Casey:
And so far, I really, really, really like it.
Casey:
And I'm glad that I have the cell service for the runs, and even more importantly, for when I'm out with Declan.
Casey:
And I don't want to be attracted to my phone.
Casey:
This is absolutely a first world problem.
Casey:
It is absolutely a Casey problem in that I should just have the self-control not to check Twitter every four seconds or Instagram or what have you.
Casey:
But I know myself enough to know that I don't have a tremendous overabundance of self-control.
Casey:
And so removing this problem by removing my phone from the equation is a pretty good way to fix it.
Casey:
And I almost put TweetBot on my watch for instances where I'm, say, DMing with somebody or something like that, and it occurred to me by putting TweetBot on my watch, I will be defeating the purpose that I've set out for my watch, which is to say being able to be distraction-free.
Casey:
Another couple things I've noticed, once I upgraded to High Sierra and I could use Unlock with my watch again—
Casey:
Because apparently there's something that causes issues with the cellular watch and Sierra and below.
Casey:
So you have to be on High Sierra for your cellular watch to do watch unlock.
Casey:
Once I upgraded two of my three computers to High Sierra, that has come back.
Casey:
And that seems to be faster than my Series Zero by, generally speaking, a pretty comfortable margin.
Casey:
Apple Pay is way faster.
Casey:
In the last couple of months that I had my Series Zero, I'd kind of abandoned using Apple Pay on the watch because it was just so much slower than my phone.
Casey:
And it is a fair bit faster on the Series 3, which I really like.
Casey:
All in all, the combination of the Apple Watch Series 3 with LTE with AirPods is pretty darn fantastic.
Casey:
The only things that I'm really longing for are an update to RunKeeper so it will take a note of the map of what I ran.
Casey:
Because if you use the exercise app that's built into the watch, it will save a map to your health app.
Casey:
But RunKeeper hasn't built in support for that API yet, which is a real bummer.
Casey:
And again, I want podcasts on my watch.
Casey:
Pretty please, Apple, please look at Marco's post and give me podcasts on my watch.
Casey:
That's all I want.
Please, please.
Marco:
And a volume widget, please, for the love of God.
Marco:
No one cared about a volume widget on the watch until AirPods.
Marco:
And now, because AirPods don't have a good way to control volume physically on them, everybody is demanding that with good reason.
Marco:
And I can't offer it.
Marco:
There is no API for me to offer them a volume widget for either phone or watch audio levels.
Marco:
And I just... It kills me.
Yeah.
Casey:
So those are my thoughts.
Casey:
I definitely recommend it.
Casey:
I definitely think it's good.
Casey:
I definitely am glad I spent the money on both it and the cellular service on top.
Casey:
I'm giving it two thumbs up so far.
Casey:
Really, really love this device.
Marco:
Yeah, the only thing I would add is it seems like what we're seeing with the cellular holding onto Wi-Fi and everything else, this is clearly a device that, for power reasons, has to use the LTE as little as possible.
Marco:
I would say it's a good device to get... If you have a specific use case in mind, like Casey at the Park, or running without a phone, that makes a ton of sense.
Marco:
I would say don't assume this device is just going to be always happily using its LTE the way an iPad would.
Marco:
It's going to minimize LTE so aggressively that it's more useful to think of the LTE thing as a just-in-case-I-need-it kind of thing.
Marco:
Like if you're on a run and you don't want to be without a way to make a phone call in case of an emergency or you want to be reachable by people, it makes sense for that.
Marco:
But I wouldn't necessarily say that it makes sense to buy the LTE version with the assumption that you'll be using it just like a tiny phone.
Marco:
Because not only is it very, very conservative with when it uses the LTE at all, but also app-wise, the apps are not really ready for that yet.
Marco:
There were good segments about app readiness on other podcasts this week.
Marco:
I know there was a great one on Upgrade especially, and I think a little more on Connected.
Marco:
But basically, yeah, it was Connected.
Marco:
But basically, you know, the...
Marco:
Apps for Apple Watch have been written to date with the assumption that they were using the phone and their corresponding app on the phone for all their communication.
Marco:
And the watch really couldn't do much until fairly recently with its own communication.
Marco:
And until like last week, that was only on Wi-Fi.
Marco:
And because nobody really went with the watch without their phone and did much with it, there wasn't much reason to really write the apps for that.
Marco:
So Apple Watch, third-party apps, and even first-party apps, frankly, still have a long way to go before they can really make good use of independent connectivity on the watch.
Marco:
And the hardware probably needs a couple more generations before it's really able to use the LTE radio more than occasionally anyway.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
Buy it if you want to be reachable and to have a lifeline, you know, like that kind of use when you are out without a phone.
Marco:
But I wouldn't necessarily say buy it just for like entertainment to go phone-less like Casey at the park because that's not ultimately what it's for and it's not what it's optimized to do.
Marco:
I would agree with that.
Marco:
Also, you can bring your phone to the park, man.
Marco:
Kids at the park, we love our kids, but they're there a lot.
Marco:
It's okay to bring your phone and to look at Instagram while they're climbing the monkey bars and everything.
Marco:
When they're not interacting with you, when they're just running around, you can look at your phone.
Marco:
It's okay.
Marco:
I give you permission to do it.
John:
You look up and they're gone?
John:
You don't have to blame yourself.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
I think part of the problem is that, you know, this particular park, it's just in the neighborhood.
Casey:
So it's usual that it's only Declan and I that are there.
Casey:
And beyond that, he's still in the phase where everything is daddy this or really mommy this.
Casey:
And then if mommy isn't there, daddy this.
Casey:
And so it's better if I am not distracted by something else and better if I'm paying more attention to him.
Marco:
Actually, Hamilton Orr in the chat points out a very good thing.
Marco:
Bring your phone to take pictures.
Marco:
As people are realizing they can now go out into the world with just their watch, many of them I've seen are also realizing, oh, crap, I don't have a camera when I do that, and I'm used to always having a camera.
Casey:
Yeah, the thing is, and actually Mike and I talked about this very briefly on the forthcoming episode of Analog, but if I was going to bring a camera to the park, I would probably bring the big camera because I think the pictures are much, much, much better coming off of that.
Casey:
Now, once I get my fancy iPhone X in 2020 when it's finally available...
Casey:
then that might change when I have my fancy, you know, two lens camera system.
Casey:
But for now, I would be more apt to bring watch and big camera than I would be watch and phone.
Marco:
That's actually a reasonable plan.
Marco:
I like that.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But I mean, obviously, this is kind of a unique to KCU's case, and that may not be the case for everyone else.
Casey:
But I would agree with what you said a minute ago.
Casey:
If you, the listener, have a particular set of times that you think this would be useful to you, for example, exercise, particularly in a situation where you don't have access to Wi-Fi or anything else, so often but not always outdoor exercise—
Casey:
or if you just are like me and don't have very good self-control, then I think having a watch with LTE makes sense.
Casey:
And certainly one of the nice things is if you wanted to just see what you thought, you could get a watch with LTE and just choose not to enable it.
Casey:
So yes, it's I think $70 extra up front, but you don't have to incur that monthly fee until you feel like you might want it.
Casey:
But if you don't really have a particular use like that in mind, I agree with Marco that it may not really be worth the money.
Casey:
What do you think of the red dot now that you have it?
Marco:
I wish the red dot wasn't there.
Marco:
Agreed.
Marco:
I have yet to see any model except the white ceramic where I think it looks good.
Marco:
I think it looks okay or passable on the steel ones.
Marco:
and maybe okay on the gold aluminum one.
Marco:
But that's about the best I could say about it.
Casey:
Yeah, fair enough.
Casey:
I think I feel the same way.
Casey:
I wish it wasn't there.
Casey:
I wish I had an option to not have it there.
Casey:
There's always watch dots.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
But I don't trust myself to apply it in such a way that it won't look like garbage, the watch dot that is.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
I'd be afraid of that too.
Casey:
Yeah, if I could, I do believe if I could pay a little bit of extra money to have a version without the dot, I probably would have.
John:
Just got to find somebody who paints miniatures and go in there with some enamel and very carefully paint.
John:
You'll never notice it.
John:
It'll be practically perfect.
Casey:
Something like that.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But overall, I was expecting to like the watch.
Casey:
I am a pretty big fan of the Apple Watch as a platform, and I was expecting to like this new one a fair bit.
Casey:
And it turns out I really like this new watch a lot.
Casey:
So it is a very worthwhile upgrade.
Casey:
The cell, like we just discussed, maybe, maybe not.
Casey:
For me, absolutely.
Casey:
Marco, I suspect if and when you get overcast working and if and when you decide to ditch your phone for bike rides, I think you'll be more enthusiastic about the cellular radio.
Casey:
But in general, I can see that one going either way.
Casey:
But yeah, I definitely say this is a worthwhile upgrade and I'm super duper happy with my purchase.
Marco:
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Casey:
All right, John, so tell me about High Sierra and tell me I have upgraded my MacBook Adorable.
Casey:
I have upgraded my work computer.
Casey:
Am I allowed to upgrade my iMac that I'm recording on as we speak?
Casey:
Not to say that I'm going to upgrade as we're recording, of course, but am I allowed to upgrade my iMac, John?
Casey:
What's the deal?
John:
You can do what you want.
John:
It's your iMac.
Marco:
All right, so what is the official John Syracuse review of macOS High Sierra?
John:
The review is I still haven't used it.
John:
Oh, my word, John.
John:
I have literally never used it because I didn't install any of the betas, and I don't have it on any of my Macs.
John:
Now, why don't I have it on any of my Macs?
John:
Well, obviously, the Mac Pro that I'm talking to right now can't run it.
John:
I never did do the whatever, you know, firmware upgrade trickery to make it run Sierra and therefore also run High Sierra.
John:
I probably never will.
John:
So that's that.
John:
My work computer, we are not allowed to install it at work yet because of some Active Directory bugs that are supposedly fixed in the 10.13.1 beta.
John:
But right now, if you try to install it, one of our works incredibly invasive.
John:
Please don't let me know how this actually works.
John:
Hackery things is when you double click the Sierra installer, a dialog pops up with a message written by our corporate IT that says.
John:
you can't install it i'm hoping they didn't patch the binary of the installer but whatever mechanism they have to intercept the launch of a particular application and throw up an arbitrary message in a dialogue god i don't even want to know so anyway i can't upgrade the work one that would be the one i would you would be most likely to upgrade because i would have some faith that the it team that i was just complaining about had tested it and made sure all our stuff works on it and it's like practically brand new like it's all fresh and like i haven't done anything weird to it so if any computer is gonna work okay with it it's gonna be that one
John:
And then finally, my wife's computer, which I thought I was going to upgrade on day one, I found myself with cold feet.
John:
Not so much about APFS, although there are some issues with that.
John:
Like SuperDuper that I used to clone just now has like beta support for cloning from it.
John:
but really i'm getting cold feet about the 0.0 and in a way i didn't with sierra i just i don't know i maybe it's a combination like just the 0.0 is not enough to scare me away and just apfs is not enough to scare me both of them i'm hedging so i've downloaded the installer and i've done like a fresh round of backups and clones and made sure all my backups are good and you know i've done all this stuff i'm all ready to install but i thought i would pull the trigger and it's just like i'm
John:
I'm not pulling the trigger.
John:
And mostly what I would be upgrading for is the new version of photos, not for APFS, because obviously I like that and I want it and I'll get it eventually.
John:
But I want to try the new version of photos.
John:
But that has me a little bit scared, too.
John:
So it may turn out that I just wait for the point one, especially if the point one is due out soon.
John:
But right now I've been too much of a wimp.
John:
to try it so i'm just i'm just in a holding pattern waiting to see other learning to let other people go first and see what kind of disasters befall them and this is kind of weird for me because i upgraded almost all the other ones i always upgraded my wife's computer like as soon as it comes out just you know why not everything's fine but this time i don't know maybe it's just me i don't think there's anything particular about high sierra because again i haven't used any of the beta so i have nothing to base my fears on but i think uh the combo of apfs and the point zero is keeping me away
Casey:
I am surprised by that.
Casey:
Me too.
Casey:
So, Marco, have you upgraded anything yet, Marco?
Marco:
Only my laptop.
Marco:
I would like to upgrade my desktop mostly for the media format support, but that's pretty much the only thing that is really compelling for me right now.
Marco:
And the thing is, like...
Marco:
I've really been burned a lot by the last few macOS releases.
Marco:
Ever since the Discovery D fiasco, pretty much every, almost every major version of macOS in the last few years has broken some subsystem that I rely on for a little while.
Marco:
Sometimes for the entire release cycle.
Marco:
I'm pretty sure Sierra still messes up Bluetooth input devices.
Marco:
I still think Bluetooth is messed up in Sierra.
Marco:
And
Marco:
Some people were reporting USB audio bugs earlier on in Sierra's lifecycle and stuff.
Marco:
This is my work machine.
Marco:
I can't afford downtime of my Mac, of my main Mac here.
Marco:
I do my entire job here.
Marco:
The idea of taking a risk on High Sierra early on in its lifecycle, with Sierra, it's kind of like the devil you know.
Marco:
It's like,
Marco:
I know Sierra is buggy with Bluetooth pointing devices, so I'm used to my mouse and trackpad just occasionally disconnecting for no reason and then reconnecting.
Marco:
I've gotten used to that now.
Marco:
With High Sierra, I don't know what this year's Discovery D is yet.
Marco:
I've heard lots of reports that it's the Windows Server rewrite.
Marco:
When I ask people on Twitter, is High Sierra okay or not?
Marco:
What have been your experiences?
Marco:
the responses were pretty evenly split between it's totally perfect, I've had no problems, and oh my god, it's been a disaster mostly for the Windows Server things.
Marco:
So I assume that it mostly works if you're doing things the way Apple wants you to do, but if you have some kind of workflow or setup that puts a strain on edge cases of the Windows Server.
Marco:
So for instance, if you are...
Marco:
frequently connecting or disconnecting monitors or using clamshell mode maybe like like that kind of thing i bet it's probably more likely to have bugs related to the windows server stuff than or if you have a particular gpu like some yeah particular nvidia gpu of a particular isn't steve trouton smith have some computer with some particular gpu that just kernel panics like based on a clock
John:
like you can just time it and 30 minutes into kernel panics like that's the thing about a lot of these graphics subsystem things in the windows server that deal with gpu drivers it could be perfectly fine for you because your gpu driver has no problems and for someone else it doesn't matter how lightly or heavily you use it if you're disconnecting or turning monitors just that your gpu the driver for it has some bug that gets tripped on average after every 30 minutes so um i've heard that as well um and at
John:
I don't know if that's making me wary because I assume I don't have one of those weird GPUs, but who knows?
Marco:
You know, that kind of thing.
Marco:
I'm just not willing to take the risk on my main computer when there are still widespread reports of problems of that magnitude.
Marco:
The advantages of High Sierra are just not very compelling for me to take that risk right now.
Marco:
Over time, that calculus will change.
Marco:
Over time, it will start to become more annoying that I don't have the latest version because lots of things around the Apple ecosystem these days will assume that you have the latest version and will only work correctly or fully with the latest version, especially with features that are shared between iOS and the Mac, things like continuity and handoff, even simple things like Notes.
Marco:
Notes has new features now.
Marco:
um, the HDVC and, and, and he stuff like that's going to become more annoying over time as, as my photos app can't edit the photos that are in it.
Marco:
Um, things like that, like that's going to eventually push me over probably within the next few weeks.
Marco:
Like I'm, I'm probably just going to install the 0.1 and hope that it fixes everything.
Marco:
Um, if not the 0.2,
Marco:
But basically right now, why should I install it?
Marco:
There's not much reason to install it.
Marco:
And there's just a lot of potential for there still be pretty serious problems with it that I just don't need to be the one to fix.
Marco:
When I was at Tumblr, one of my rules was that when I was choosing...
Marco:
software or infrastructure that we were going to build upon one of my rules was to never be the biggest user of anything you know you want to use stuff that like facebook uses or twitter uses because you know like if there's any kind of bug at scale they will have already hit it and probably will have submitted and fixed uh you know fixes for it it'll be fixed by them long before it's ever a problem for you
Marco:
And similarly with Mac OS beta, why install the .0?
Marco:
Why not let the entire rest of the world use it first, report all the bugs, get Apple to fix them, and then install the .1 or the .2?
Marco:
It's selfish.
Marco:
You should, as a social good, try to contribute with everybody.
Marco:
But no, screw that.
Marco:
I need my computer to work.
Marco:
And so I'll let everyone else do that.
Marco:
And I'll sit back and collect the fixes.
John:
speaking of uh computer reliability my shiny new space gray 2017 macbook pro has already proven to not be as reliable as my outgoing eight-year-old uh 2009 mac pro at work because i've had it for what like two weeks now or something and i came in one day this week and it was just off and i booted up and sure enough it had colonel panicked in the middle of the night at like 3 a.m
John:
It was just sitting there.
John:
Nobody's using it.
John:
Who knows what was going on?
John:
I didn't get anything good.
John:
I did do the send report to Apple.
John:
I looked at the thing.
John:
I couldn't make heads or tails of it.
John:
Nothing obvious jumped in.
John:
It didn't even look like a full crash report.
John:
Whatever it had saved in NVRAM, it was just information about my system but didn't tell me about what had crashed or show me any symbols or anything like that.
John:
I'm like, you know, if it wants to match my 2009 Mac Pro's performance, it needs to not kernel panic again for another seven years.
John:
Because my 2009 Mac Pro did kernel panic.
John:
It did kernel panic a couple of times when they first installed the terrible antivirus software that they were forcing us all to use because it apparently had an incompatibility with, like...
John:
uh zeons or something that was that was it was a story like oh you're the only computer in the entire company with a zeon in it and the and the the antivirus software kernel panics reliably kernel panic zeons uh and we we changed to a different antivirus thing and so that solved that problem so those are the only panics i had those were explicable and i could tell what was doing it um
John:
let me say did we have any other kernel packs in that one maybe i when i gave away what gave away when i when i returned my 2009 mac pro at work i also like returned you know all the stuff that came with it and you know what came with it snow leopard on a plastic disc
John:
nice that's what that's what came on this computer so maybe i had some kernel bad ice back on it but like but in general it's just i don't it's not a thing that i expect to happen like it just and so within the first few weeks of it and remember this is running sierra not high sierra but like 10 12 6 the latest version of sierra
John:
Not often on a suspicious start.
John:
Oh, well.
John:
At least it boots fast.
Marco:
I mean, the thing to remember, too, is, like, you know, these macOS releases on a schedule, not when it's done.
Marco:
Apple is, you know, Apple usually ships high-quality stuff.
Marco:
You know, like, we complain, but, like, their track record's pretty good.
Marco:
But there's also a hierarchy.
Marco:
Like, you could be pretty sure that when a new iPhone comes out, that's usually pretty solid because they care a lot about that, and they work really hard on that to make that rock-solid.
Marco:
But everything else beneath the iPhone gets less and less reliable in that way.
Marco:
Like, you can't be sure that a lower priority release is going to be as solid as iPhone hardware.
Marco:
Because, like, everything else has to basically ship on a schedule whenever it's ready.
Marco:
And, again, usually that works out okay.
Marco:
But, like, they were going to ship High Sierra when they did, regardless of whether it was done.
Marco:
So we got it, and it's probably close to done.
Marco:
There probably aren't a lot of bugs, but that was shipped on a schedule, not after hitting a certain quality threshold.
John:
It's right that they do it on a schedule, but they control scope.
John:
Even on iOS, they do.
John:
They control scope.
John:
So you either can change the schedule by saying, we're going to push this out, or you can narrow the scope so you can ship what is shippable.
John:
And they did it on iOS, too.
John:
They didn't ship that one feature I wanted the most, which is the iMessage syncing.
John:
That fell out of the release, right?
John:
Because you're right.
John:
They are shipping on a schedule.
John:
Look, we got to ship this because we got to sell some phones here and we got to ship iOS 11 and whatever it was like a month before that fell out because it's like this is not going to be ready in high Sierra.
John:
apfs on fusion drives and automatically converting spinning disks all fell out of it and fusion drives coming back right so that's what they're trying to do is say we do want to ship on a schedule but we want to ship quality software so we have to make a call at a certain point you're not going to be ready in time for the schedule so guess what feature you get booted out of the os and that's that's easy to do in theory but in practice
John:
pulling features out is not a harm-free process you are left with a code base that is different than it was before that may have new interactions that you didn't anticipate and so you now you have to test that new combination of stuff and so it is difficult and i see what i was trying to do and in general that's how modern software development works you usually they you want to have a reasonably fixed schedule especially for something that's like a marketing type thing where every year you want to have a new version of ios or whatever
John:
And you just control scope.
John:
And it's easier said than done.
John:
And that's what Apple's trying to do.
John:
But as you said, Marco, you know, even though they're doing the same strategy on both OSs.
John:
the big show is ios and then everything else in the company gets slightly less of everything slightly less time money people uh everything about it is less how much is it less is it proportionally less you don't you know it has fewer users right it is also a more mature product but it is also a product that makes less money and like so i don't know mac users have been feeling neglected for a while because ios gets all the glory and stuff like that but uh
John:
In theory, there's a lot of articles.
John:
There was a good one.
John:
Stephen Hackett had two articles about this, about High Sierra being like Snow Leopard, right?
John:
But Snow Leopard was back in the days when Mac OS X was still pretty firmly in, maybe not in the glory position, right?
John:
And it was an important product.
John:
It was a very important product to Apple.
John:
So when they did the No New Features release,
John:
A, that was a lie, and B, they kind of meant it a little bit more.
John:
I mean, Grand Settled Death Scratch was released in Snow Leopard, if I recall correctly.
John:
That's a pretty big feature to say no new features.
John:
But these days, it does feel like...
John:
Like, if this is supposed to be a snow leopard, it doesn't feel very snow leopard.
John:
It doesn't feel like they took Sierra and just polished it.
John:
Because as you said, Marco, Sierra still has some rough edges that just seem to have never been resolved.
John:
And now you're adding more stuff, and it's not just, like, taking Sierra and making it more reliable and faster.
John:
I don't know.
John:
Like...
John:
And like I said, I haven't installed that.
John:
My spidey sense is tingling.
Casey:
Wow.
John:
Great.
Casey:
I mean, I have, like I said, put this on the adorable in my work computer.
Casey:
And so far, the only thing that I've really noticed is that I can now use my unlock with my cellular Apple Watch again, like I discussed earlier.
Casey:
Otherwise, it doesn't really seem any different to me.
Casey:
And in fact, it seems so similar to me that I intend to go through...
Casey:
uh steven's review not only because i want to read it in general but to tell me what it is that's different because it seems like a lot of the big differences are safari which i had previously put on my sierra builds and uh photos which i don't use so once you take those away it's kind of like
Casey:
eh, I'm sure there's other good stuff there, but eh, whatever.
Marco:
And I hope that, like I mentioned how Sierra still has these Bluetooth issues that don't seem to be fixed.
Marco:
With High Sierra, have they fixed them?
Marco:
Or did they just move on and are they breaking other things?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I hope they've fixed them.
Marco:
But you never know with these kind of releases.
Marco:
That's one of the reasons why I haven't installed it yet.
Marco:
But what you said, Casey, that you could barely even really tell that you had upgraded.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
that's you know for for a release like this where you know there really weren't user facing changes um that's what you want that that is the ideal case yeah yeah now we'll see i mean you know your your track record reporting problems to us with your computer is pretty poor like you might tell us in six months oh yeah by the way it's been rebooting every day at noon and i don't know why like wait that's a problem yeah it's just been fine i haven't wanted to take it in like
Marco:
But I hope when I install it, I don't notice.
Marco:
And that maybe my trackpad and mouse stay connected.
Marco:
That's what I want to have in there.
Marco:
I don't want any excitement there.
Marco:
And there's a lot about Mac OS...
Marco:
that i hope apple is working on and i hope they do improve long term like steven's review had this great paragraph towards the end that basically was listing like a whole bunch of areas in mac os that are still big problems and could really use improvements big and small if if you think mac os is done
Marco:
and that it's perfected and that there's nothing more to do you aren't thinking about the problem enough that macOS still has tons of places it can go and could use lots of improvements big and small right now it looks like apple's not really doing much of that i hope that's just because we're like in the you know middle stages of those efforts and there's nothing to show yet
Marco:
Because there's still tons of things to make Macs awesome and to make them better and to modernize them that appear to not be happening.
Marco:
So again, I hope they really are happening and they're just not ready yet.
Marco:
And I think what we've seen from Apple in the last few years is that it does seem like there was a period a few years ago where they really were not working on the Mac much at all.
Marco:
But it also seems like a few years ago, they kind of had a change of heart on that front and that they began reinvesting a lot in the Mac again.
Marco:
And that resulted in things like the Touch Bar and things like that.
Marco:
I hope that that progress continues.
Marco:
Even though I haven't personally enjoyed the Touch Bar, I honestly think it was a pretty big miss.
Marco:
And I think the lack of...
Marco:
Any touch bar changes in high Sierra might indicate that Apple realizes that too.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But the fact that they're investing in the Mac is really, really good.
Marco:
I hope they continue to invest not just in cool hardware tricks like the touch bar, but also in fundamentally moving the software forward.
Marco:
With High Sierra, they laid some new groundwork with the Windows server.
Marco:
I hope that was a big deal for moving everything forward.
Marco:
I hope it succeeds, and I hope they maintain it properly to iron out the bugs and to fix all these subsystems that might have been broken and move the platform forward.
Marco:
We haven't seen that yet, but I hope that's in progress.
Casey:
Agreed.
Marco:
Thanks to our three sponsors this week, Squarespace, Backblaze, and Jamf Now.
Marco:
And we will see you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
They didn't mean it.
Casey:
So, you know how there was a time when Marco really enjoyed adding just kind of random things to his Twitter bio?
Casey:
And he would be coffee enthusiast, and then he would be analyst, and then there were a couple other ones after that.
John:
I don't remember that time.
John:
When do you look at Twitter bios?
Marco:
The elephant in the room, that was my favorite one.
John:
I remember that, but it wasn't adding things.
John:
That was one thing, right?
Casey:
Changing things in the bio.
Casey:
The point is that I am now changing my Twitter bio to car journalist.
Casey:
The reason being for the last week, I have had a loaner car from Fiat Chrysler of America.
Marco:
Really?
Casey:
That loaner car is not what I hoped it would be.
Casey:
And it is not the thing that I was promised.
Casey:
And I will explain.
Casey:
A friend of the show, Sam Abuel-Smith, who we discussed earlier, of the Wheel Bearings podcast, which you should listen to if... And I've mentioned this a few times in the past.
Casey:
But if you ever wanted neutral, but by someone who doesn't... Who actually knows what they're talking about, unlike us three idiots, you would like Wheel Bearings.
Casey:
Anyway, Sam wrote me...
Casey:
I want to say it was in May or June and said, hey, if you wanted to take a spin with that car, and I'm not going to tell you which car it is, I could probably arrange that.
Casey:
And in June, I think I told this tale of woe already once.
Casey:
In June, I was told, it was I think the week after WWDC, we will give you this car as a loaner.
Casey:
And then right before it was my turn, then the tire exploded apparently or some such.
Casey:
And then they needed to get a new tire shipped in because apparently this was not an off-the-shelf tire.
Casey:
A month or so later, they were going to give me the same car again.
Casey:
And then as it was coming down 95 from Washington, D.C.
Casey:
to me, apparently picked up a chip in the windshield or like a shatter in the windshield.
Casey:
And so they turned around, went back to D.C.
Casey:
So as an apology tour, Fiat Chrysler of America has loaned me a Jeep Grand Cherokee 4x4 Limited, if I'm not mistaken.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure that's what it was.
Casey:
I do have the sticker in front of me.
Casey:
Well, not in front of me, but I do have the sticker.
Casey:
Yes, Jeep Grand Cherokee Limited 4x4.
Casey:
It has about 5,000 miles on the clock.
Casey:
And it is, it's a thing.
Casey:
It's a thing.
John:
Is that your review?
Casey:
That's my whole review.
John:
That's what happens when you get that big Volvo SUV.
John:
You get this big Volvo and they're like, he likes giant shopping carts.
John:
Let's send them a big Jeep.
Casey:
That's what it is.
Casey:
That's exactly it.
John:
Big tippy shopping cart.
Casey:
Big tippy shopping cart.
Casey:
Well, so... So here's the problem.
Casey:
If I hadn't had the Volvo in the family, I think I would have been fairly impressed by this car.
Casey:
But having the Volvo in the family...
Casey:
This car is the American version of a luxury SUV, which is to say it's not that luxurious and it's kind of a piece of garbage.
John:
It's got big cup holders though, doesn't it?
Casey:
It does have big cup holders.
Casey:
So it does have a lot of really good things going for it.
Casey:
It does have a fairly robust Bluetooth setup that has some really neat features.
Casey:
And that's Uconnect, the letter U, connect.
Casey:
And it's been around in Chrysler cars for a while now.
Casey:
It does some neat things, like it'll read you your text messages.
Casey:
You can even put on a Do Not Disturb mode on the infotainment, so it will no longer offer to read you your text messages.
Casey:
The Bluetooth connectivity for media worked reasonably well.
Casey:
All that is decent.
Casey:
It has a backup camera.
Casey:
It does not have a 360 camera.
Casey:
It has an auto-raising and lowering liftgate.
Casey:
It actually has an AC plug, so not a DC plug like a cigarette lighter.
Casey:
I'm talking a full-on, like the same kind of outlet you would find in your house plug in the back of the center console for the rear seats.
Casey:
which is super cool.
Casey:
I knew that they had put these in cars before, but to get a decent one of those as an aftermarket thing, it's like a couple hundred bucks, and this is just in the car.
Casey:
Overall, it was a nice car.
Casey:
You know, it did a lot of things reasonably well.
Casey:
This particular model was the V6.
Casey:
The V6 is not fast.
Casey:
It does do the stop-start thing.
Casey:
It actually, I think, was a little bit smoother on the stop-start than Aaron's Volvo, believe it or not.
Casey:
So, so far, things are looking good.
Casey:
But then everything takes a turn.
Marco:
Wait, as I'm building and pricing this thing to match what you're saying, the next step that I have to choose is the color.
Marco:
And you know I only have one question.
Casey:
It is not white, you jackass.
Marco:
Yes!
Casey:
It is a dark, dark, dark gray.
Casey:
What is the official color?
Casey:
Where does it say it on the sticker?
Marco:
It looks like it comes in about 16 different grays.
Casey:
The exterior color is granite crystal metallic clear coat exterior paint.
John:
This thing is almost the same price as your Volvo's.
John:
You get it.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
The base price was $40, according to the sticker.
John:
Do you have a 4x4?
Casey:
It is a 4x4.
Casey:
Limited trim, right?
Casey:
Correct.
Casey:
Grand Cherokee Limited 4x4.
Casey:
This is a 2017 model.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Sorry.
Marco:
I'm a $39,900.
Casey:
Yeah, that's the base price.
Casey:
Optional equipment includes the customer-preferred package 23H, which is apparently luxury group 2, which is a $4,300 option that includes a 506-watt amplifier and 8.4-inch touchscreen display.
Casey:
leather trim seats with perforated inserts oh we need to talk about uh heated and cooled seats actually because that's a thing lane since lane departure warning plus parallel and perpendicular park assist have you tried auto parking in the tesla i have does it work it works mostly but it's so slow i usually just do it myself yeah yeah it's uh it's i tried it once with perpendicular parking and it was garbage and actually to be fair so was aaron's volvo
Casey:
Finally, finally, a $595 blind spot and cross-path detection and a destination charge of $1,000.
Casey:
Total sticker price, ladies and gentlemen, $48,230, which is quite a bit less than we paid for Aaron's Volvo.
Casey:
So it feels like the American take on a luxury SUV.
Casey:
A lot of the stuff is nice, and it does have a lot of the bits and bobs, like the radar cruise control.
Casey:
But so much of it, it gets wrong.
Casey:
Like this Uconnect thing.
Casey:
And this isn't that interesting without a visual aid.
Casey:
And so you're just going to have to go on faith until I eventually write my blog post.
Casey:
But the Uconnect thing is an assault on my eyeballs.
Casey:
It is a billion buttons.
Casey:
Everything is gray.
Casey:
Everything blends together.
Casey:
There are neat features about it.
Casey:
So as an example, when you're in the Bluetooth media screen...
Casey:
There's a little teeny tiny button that says map.
Casey:
And then it will do a popover of the current map.
Casey:
So you can look at where you are without leaving the context of the Bluetooth screen.
Casey:
That's a kind of cool idea.
Casey:
But it isn't pinch to zoom or whatever the case may be, which Aaron's car is.
Casey:
The resolution of the screen was not very good.
Casey:
Aaron's car, I wouldn't call it retina, but it's of that kind of caliber, right?
Casey:
It's a decently high-res screen.
Casey:
This thing looked like it was five years old.
Casey:
And this is a 2017 model.
Casey:
And here again, as I was starting to say at the beginning, it's so frustrating because without Aaron's car as a comparison, as a benchmark, I actually think I would have liked this car a lot more.
Casey:
And when I met Aaron way back when, she had said her fantasy car in a lot of ways was Grand Cherokee.
Casey:
She just always really liked them.
Casey:
And you know what?
Casey:
I always really liked them.
Casey:
I always thought they were really nice car or trucks, I should say.
Casey:
But as compared to the Volvo, which does all of the things this does and more and does every single one of them better, except, of course, going off road, I would choose the Volvo any day of the week and twice on Sunday.
Casey:
Knob feel, it was maybe a seven or eight.
Casey:
It's a nice, it feels nice, but it's not.
Marco:
This is a category for us.
Casey:
It is.
Casey:
It really is.
Casey:
But it's not.
Casey:
You can tell it's just not all there.
Casey:
And the things that really drove me nuts about it were things where they just didn't think it through.
Casey:
So as an example...
Casey:
Most of you listeners probably live in an area where at a stoplight – and for Americans, it's a left.
Casey:
For those crazies that drive on the wrong side of the road, it would be making a right.
Casey:
But for Americans, if you're trying to make a left, let's say that there are two lanes to make a left-hand turn.
Casey:
So you're on presumably like a multi-lane road, and you're at a stoplight.
Casey:
You're going to make a left-hand turn, which is the difficult turn for an American to make.
Casey:
So you stop the car and the stop start probably kicks in.
Casey:
So the car feels like it's stalled, but it's actually fine.
Casey:
You go to take off.
Casey:
Once the light turns green, the car starts right up.
Casey:
That actually works really well.
Casey:
And like I said, it's actually a little smoother than Aaron's car, surprisingly, especially since it's two more cylinders.
Casey:
And immediately, because what ends up happening is it thinks, perhaps because I'm an idiot and I'm the only American that ever uses my turn signal, it thinks that you're signaling to make a lane change.
Casey:
And it's trying to tell you there's somebody next to you, which on the highway at like 70 miles an hour or what have you, that is a useful thing.
Casey:
But when you're on a surface street accelerating from zero miles an hour to 15 or 20 or 30 or 40, the moment you leave zero miles an hour and all of a sudden you hear, oh my word, is it frustrating.
Casey:
And a lot of the roads in the area in which I live are multi-lane roads in each direction.
Casey:
So there are a lot of times when I'll be making a left adjacent to another car and all the time, but
Casey:
It is unbelievably frustrating.
Casey:
So here's an example of where it's a great idea in principle, but it's just poorly executed.
Casey:
The Uconnect thing with like all the Bluetooth bits and bobs and all of that.
Casey:
Great idea in principle, not a good execution.
Casey:
And furthermore, where's my damn car play?
Casey:
It's just infuriating.
Casey:
And so, so much of this car, and I know I say this about so many things, but it was death by a thousand paper cuts.
Casey:
I, in a lot of ways, I really liked it.
Casey:
But God, it was terrible.
Casey:
Any thoughts about the car?
Casey:
And then I'd like to do a little inside baseball about what the delivery process was like.
John:
Can you disable stop start?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
And it's actually a physical button right there on the dashboard.
John:
I've never had a car with that, but I would so desperately.
John:
I think I would not buy one if I couldn't turn it off and have it remember the setting.
Casey:
You know, it's really not that bad in the grand scheme of things.
John:
I know.
John:
You won't even notice.
John:
Blah, blah, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Saves energy, blah, blah, blah.
John:
Nope.
Casey:
Oh, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
You would notice.
Casey:
I noticed.
Casey:
You would absolutely notice.
Casey:
But you do get used to it.
Casey:
And especially if you drive a car with three pedals.
John:
I mean, I understand the theory.
John:
And, like, I think I might leave it on on something big like a minivan or an SUV or some other thing that I didn't consider a real car.
John:
Like, you know what I mean?
John:
But I just don't want that.
John:
I mean, the true stop start is what Marco has.
John:
When he's at a stoplight, nothing is moving in the drivetrain.
John:
It is stopped.
John:
But then when he goes again, he doesn't have to wait for the engine to start.
John:
And I know it's not waiting.
John:
I know they start really fast.
John:
The starter motors are fine.
John:
They're built to be started.
John:
Maybe you'll notice, but there'll never be any lag.
John:
I don't want that.
John:
I don't want it at all.
John:
It still sucks.
Marco:
To me, start-stop, CVTs, all these new autos that have a million different gears in them, to me, it's kind of like when LCD came out for TVs, and LCDs were okay, and they were fairly simple.
Marco:
But then, towards the middle and end of the LCD era in TVs, they started adding all these crazy hacks to
Marco:
to try to boost their specs.
Marco:
So that's when you started getting like the weird dynamic backlighting and like all sorts of like weird hacks that really were just like piles upon piles of hacks that made certain things worse all in an effort to try to boost specs towards the end of their life.
Marco:
before we switch to a superior technology of OLED.
Marco:
And that, to me, is what gas engine cars are going through for the last 10 years or so.
Marco:
They're trying so hard to eke out every single last mile per gallon to meet new spec requirements and to be more competitive and everything.
Marco:
But they're just adding all these crazy hacks that add up to being a lot less fun to drive or a lot less nice of a drive in certain ways and to certain people who care about such things.
Marco:
And really, these are just all temporary hacks on the way to the next thing, which is electric.
Marco:
But in cars, things move more slowly.
Marco:
And so we're going to be in this transition for a while.
Marco:
But ultimately, we're going to look back at all these crazy gas engine hacks as just these awful relics of a transitional time.
John:
And also the sensor stuff.
John:
This is kind of the... I think we're in the mouse motor seatbelt error.
John:
I don't know if mouse... I'm not getting it right.
John:
But do you remember the seatbelts?
John:
There was a requirement.
John:
I think it was like a government requirement in the U.S.,
John:
that you either had to have airbags or automatic motorized seatbelts.
John:
Do you remember the seatbelts that go along a little track along like the A-pillar?
Marco:
Is that what those were for?
John:
Yeah, because it was like before car makers weren't ready to put airbags in yet.
John:
So like, well, we've got this bottle of car and we haven't figured out the whole airbag thing yet or we don't have a supplier or we haven't certified it or the car is almost done or whatever.
John:
So they would put in the motorized seatbelt.
John:
So when you open the door, this little motorized thing would go down your A-pillar with the shoulder harness attached to it.
John:
And then you'd get in the car and close the door and it would go and motor back up to be over your shoulder.
Casey:
That's what my Saturn had.
John:
And first of all, those are an abomination and I never would have bought a car with them and they're terrible.
John:
But it was like, oh, from now on, safety features will just be more and more invasive.
John:
But no, we figured that out.
John:
Eventually, we got the airbag thing figured out.
John:
The motorized seatbelts went away.
John:
So I feel like sensors are in the little motorized seatbelt there where it's like...
John:
Sensors are good.
John:
We want them for safety.
John:
Governments are going to require certain things or whatever, but a lot of them are poorly implemented.
John:
Like Casey's, you know, lane detection thing that is...
John:
telling them he's going to go into a lane where somebody is there and really he's just making a left along with a bunch of other people, right?
John:
Sensors are good.
John:
We should have more of them.
John:
We should have more cameras.
John:
You know, all the stuff that, like, makes it easy to park and, you know, the backup cameras are mandated in 2017 models and later in the US, I think, like, those are all good, but a lot of the early implementations are not good.
John:
And so we get angry, like, oh, the safety equipment sucks.
John:
I don't want to have all these electronic sensors blooping at me.
John:
I want the sensors.
John:
I don't want them blooping at me.
John:
So I'm hoping...
John:
that these the the incredibly annoying blooping sensors we get that we get this figured out and it settles down into the current state of like safety equipment like airbags where you don't notice them they're small the the steering wheels aren't gigantic because of them anymore um and we just all you know accept the the safety benefits of them
John:
uh but i don't know it's been a while with the sensors and almost every reviewer still reads like mentions hey can you turn that stuff off like in some ways i'm almost kind of glad that i didn't get that more expensive option on my accord for the honda sensing package and stuff because i have the backup camera which is the most important thing but all the other sensing stuff for like lane change and whatever like
John:
I guess it would be easier than turning my head, but I would probably still turn my head anyway.
Marco:
I mean, for whatever it's worth, both the BMW and the Tesla systems for these things have not been annoying.
Marco:
They have not annoyed me at times where they shouldn't.
Marco:
They've been great.
Casey:
Yeah, the Volvos is very good as well.
Casey:
The only problem I have with the Volvo is there's been a couple of times when it's done a panic stop on behalf of the driver when really it wasn't necessary, which is very startling.
Casey:
But that's only been a couple of times where, by comparison with the Jeep...
Casey:
you know half the time i was driving it um a couple other thoughts actually before we do a little inside baseball a remote start on a car that you can only cool once the car started that is awesome aaron's car can be remote started curiously enough from the volvo app but cannot be remote started from the key fob which is kind of backwards from what i would expect but this thing had a remote start right on the key fob and that was super nice
Casey:
So ventilated seats, they're cool, I guess.
Casey:
And I don't mean that to be punny, but it didn't make that big of a difference.
Casey:
I certainly liked it.
Casey:
And if it was like a $100 or $200 option on a Phantom car I was about to buy, I would probably tick that checkbox.
Casey:
But if it was like a $500 or $1,000 option, no way.
Marco:
Cooled seats.
Marco:
Heated seats are a different beast.
Marco:
Heated seats are easy.
Casey:
Oh, very much.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Cooled seats, I've had a number of different ones.
Marco:
My current car doesn't have them because at the time I bought it, Tesla didn't offer them.
Marco:
I think it still doesn't.
Marco:
The way cooled seats are implemented makes a huge difference in how useful or non-useful they are.
Marco:
What is cooling them?
Marco:
Are they just taking an offshoot of a vent from the main system and cooling you that way?
Marco:
Are they just blowing air with their own little fan?
Marco:
Do they have their own compressor even?
Marco:
There are different degrees of cooled seats, and it makes a big difference.
Marco:
Also, one issue I had with the... The M5 had it, but I almost never used it because the cut of the fabric on the sport seats...
Marco:
didn't have a lot of room for, like, the big areas with the holes that would ventilate.
Marco:
So, like, it would cool, like, part of my, you know, thighs, but not, like, the whole area that needed to be cooled.
Marco:
And there wasn't a lot of airflow.
Marco:
Like, the way you'd sit on it would just kind of, like, block it shut.
Marco:
The best I have felt yet, a while back, Tiff had a Lexus IS250.
Marco:
And that one had really nice air-conditioned seats.
Marco:
It was like sitting on a glorious air-conditioned air hockey table.
Marco:
You would feel it.
Marco:
It cooled really strongly to the point where eventually your legs would get cold and you'd have to turn it down.
Marco:
And I never had to turn it down in the M5.
Marco:
The M5 was always like... I was just dying for more.
Marco:
But from what I understand, there are a lot of different levels of how good these things can be.
Marco:
So I'm not...
Casey:
familiar with the one that was in your your you know big jeep monstrosity but uh maybe it was just not one of the good ones yeah very well could be and i think that's mostly it obviously i will you know write some amount of review for my website about this uh what was interesting about it was apparently you know fiat and all the other car manufacturers have you know these fleets of vehicles and there's you know presumably one in the east coast one in the
Casey:
And so when this was being arranged, I had come to find out that the car was in, I actually thought at the time, D.C.
Casey:
It turns out it was actually in Baltimore, which is about a three-hour drive from where I am.
Casey:
And so when we were arranging it, I had assumed that that meant I would have to meet the driver halfway somehow and pick the car up.
Casey:
And then drive it the rest of the way.
Casey:
But as it turns out, no, when you're press, oh, they come to you.
Casey:
They drove the car all the way to me.
Casey:
We spoke for about two minutes.
Casey:
They handed me the keys and then they drove back to Baltimore.
Casey:
And that was that.
Casey:
And tomorrow they're going to come to my house.
Casey:
I will presumably speak with them for two minutes and then they will go back to Baltimore, which I just thought was was the most bonkers thing.
Casey:
But I guess that's normal.
Casey:
There was no formal or implied agreement that I would write or talk about any of this, really.
Casey:
Obviously, I wanted to in part because I feel like I kind of owed it to them, but they never said, like, it has to be a good review.
Casey:
It has to be so long or anything like that.
Casey:
I mean, they never really even said you have to talk about it.
Casey:
They just said, hey, if you want the car, you can have the car.
Casey:
And I said, yes, please.
Casey:
It's a very odd thing.
Casey:
And I'm very thankful to Sam for kind of arranging this for me.
Casey:
and we'll see if we get the car that I was originally slated to get because, you know, like I said, this was kind of the apology tour car.
Casey:
We'll see if I ever do get my hands on the thing I originally wanted to get, and we'll find out.
Marco:
Is it from the same company?
Casey:
It is.
Casey:
It is from Fiat Chrysler of America.
Marco:
Well, I mean, maybe.
Marco:
So there have been a couple of times when I've been given review samples of things.
Marco:
And it's similar in the sense that I've never been asked to provide a positive review in exchange for receiving a thing.
Marco:
I mean, I'm sure there are less ethical companies that will ask press that, but I don't think they would last very long doing that because that's a massive ethical problem.
Marco:
And I think the press would not react kindly to being asked to do that.
Marco:
So no one's ever asked me for a positive review or anything, but
Marco:
The implication is always that they expect a review.
Marco:
It's never usually, you know, it's never like I don't like sign a contract saying I'm going to review it.
Marco:
But usually the implication is they're sending me these things for me to review them.
Marco:
Usually when I give a particularly negative review, I don't usually hear from that company again.
Marco:
So, given your summary of this car, I don't know how this company works and how they deal with their press outreach and review units, but I maybe wouldn't expect you to get whatever car that you actually wanted.
Marco:
The relationship might end at this point.
Marco:
It shouldn't work that way.
Marco:
but it does work that way for a lot of companies a lot of the time.
Marco:
Honestly, this is part of the problem with that style of review.
Marco:
When you combine it also with the nature of advertising-driven publications,
Marco:
this is also one of the reasons why there's often a conflict of interest.
Marco:
And one of the reasons why, like, you know, I think Consumer Reports famously just goes and buys their cars to review.
Marco:
Like, they don't take review samples because that can be seen as affecting the outcome.
Marco:
And even if you try so hard...
Marco:
as the reviewer, to be neutral and to be objective about everything, it still does make you feel better about a company if you got something for free.
Marco:
It does affect the way you frame it in your mind, even subconsciously.
Marco:
It's very, very hard to try to turn that off and try to be totally objective.
Marco:
There's a big justification, I think, to publications and reviewers who don't accept freebies and who just buy the things they review.
John:
So the corollary to this is that Consumer Reports has terrible car reviews.
John:
And the good car magazine is like Car and Driver.
John:
have spent decades crapping on entire brands and lines of cars and companies just decade after decade of GM makes crap.
John:
Everything they make is terrible and they still keep sending them their cars.
John:
Right.
John:
So like it's obviously you're not car and driver.
John:
So Marco's probably right in your case.
John:
Right.
John:
They don't need you.
John:
But if you're big enough and important enough,
John:
they'll just keep sending you cars, even if every single time you send them, you crap on their cars.
John:
And they'll say things pretty much just as harsh as what Casey said, only in slightly different language.
John:
Like, come and last in all the comparison tests, the summary reviews are terrible.
John:
I mean, hell, I read you the one-liner summary of the Acura TLX, the automotive wallpaper.
John:
Do you think Acura wants them to keep sending them their cars?
John:
But they're going to keep sending them because of their car and driver.
John:
So it is possible to get enough clout to...
John:
i mean you know people complain like uh one of the best complaints about car and driver is they're on bmw's payroll because they love bmw's for years but guess what that changed recently right about the time they added electric steering and started screwing up all their cars and it changed a little bit with the bangle error with styling uh so now people now all the the uh conspiracy theorists don't know what to do because it's like i thought we were paid off of bmw bmw keep losing comparison tests and all their reviews are negative so
John:
Some form of decent journalistic independence is possible, even if you get free cars and go in all the press stores and everything like that.
John:
But Casey is not a car and driver, so I don't know how that's going to shake out.
Marco:
Yeah, you're right.
Marco:
Once you're big enough that they have to send you a review sample just to be relevant in the press, if you're big enough for that, then a lot of this stops applying to you because they're going to send it to you anyway.
Marco:
But when you're a smaller reviewer or when you're just trying to get started, it's really, really hard to...
John:
to to risk getting on a company's bad side because that might cut off your supply of review units oh and the weird thing is the the the nicer the car like sort of objectively the harder it is to get those cars to the companies sending you the car so a lot of car magazines have a lot of difficulty getting the supercars or the top-end luxury brands because they don't want anyone possibly saying anything negative about their you know half a million dollar car and
John:
And they don't need you because no one reading that magazine is going to buy that car anyway.
John:
So they have to do like what Top Gear used to do is like find an owner who's nice enough to let them drive their car because they can't get any from the manufacturer.
John:
The manufacturer won't even return their calls because like, no, thanks.
John:
Why would we let you say anything bad about our car?
John:
We're just going to say that our car is wonderful and sell it for millions of dollars and they're all already sold.
John:
Right.
John:
We don't need your car magazine and nobody subscribing to your stupid magazine has enough money to buy our car anyway.
John:
So forget it.
John:
So it's not all of them, obviously, but that's that's more likely the case when you're not going to get a car.
John:
It's because of some kind of that says, why would we even risk you saying anything remotely negative about our car?
John:
Why would we risk you like comparing it directly to one of our competitors car?
John:
We don't want that to happen.
John:
It's all downside for us.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Uh, I haven't talked to Sam about what the best approach is.
Casey:
Cause I'm going to write about it in some way, shape or form.
Casey:
I I'm almost sure of it, but I don't know if maybe I hold that until I get a date for the phantom, uh, car that, and, and the thing that I was promised originally is something that is much more my speed.
Casey:
And so I'm much more inclined to enjoy it.
Casey:
In fact, I have, I had feared when I, before I realized I wasn't getting it anytime soon that
Casey:
I had feared that I would like it enough that I would end up choosing that car to replace the 335 whenever that time comes.
Casey:
So it is much more in my wheelhouse, this phantom car that I'm hoping to get.
John:
You keep saying Fiat Chrysler.
John:
I'm like, is he getting the restyled Miata, the Fiat 124 Spider thing?
John:
It's not just restyled.
John:
It gets a different engine, too.
John:
Or maybe it doesn't.
John:
That is not it, but it is a good guess.
John:
But now that you say you're thinking of replacing your car, it's got to be one of those stupid...
John:
What do they make?
Marco:
They don't own Cadillac, do they?
Marco:
They do not.
Marco:
That's jam.
Marco:
I was worried you were trying to get one of those weird angled Cadillac M3 things.
Casey:
I almost bought the CTS-V.
John:
I'm trying to think of what he could replace his BMW.
John:
What the hell does Chrysler make?
Marco:
I'm guessing if Casey's looking to replace his BMW, it's going to be some kind of small hatchback that's fast and that has a way worse interior than his BMW.
John:
That's made by Chrysler?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I don't know anything about cars.
Marco:
Dodge?
John:
Is it a Viper?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Anyway, so let me suggest something.
Marco:
Even though this is not to the best journalistic integrity, you gave your review of this car.
Marco:
You just did it here on this show.
Marco:
Podcasts are wonderful because nobody who doesn't listen to the show is going to get linked to this in the company's PR division and be like, look at this guy.
Marco:
We're not going to...
Marco:
You're going to be relatively safe from any kind of negative repercussions that might arise with this company that you're still trying to work with if you just leave this here.
Marco:
Don't make the blog post.
John:
No, I think you've got to make the blog post.
John:
You've got to do it.
John:
Why?
John:
Because the only thing he has going for him is his integrity.
Marco:
That's all he's got.
Marco:
but you gave your honest review here and you could just say like look if they ask which they won't so don't even bother but if they would ask like hey you never made a blog post just say like you know look it really didn't work out for me this car is not for me i didn't feel i didn't feel right making this giant trashing blog post about it like something like that like you gave your review here you don't that's it like you've done your duty as a car journalist which i guess you are now and congratulations by the way uh that's great like
Marco:
You've done your duty.
Marco:
You don't have to make a blog post that would be very easy for people in the company to see, find, notice, and then tell someone else who's dealing with you, hey, you know what?
Marco:
We don't need to deal with this guy anymore.
John:
They would say, thank you for your honest, constructive feedback.
John:
We will take it under advisement.
Marco:
They would not.
Marco:
You don't know how PR works.
John:
If he does it, the PR people wouldn't, but if he does it in a nice way, I think he'll be fine.
John:
You're not talking about the Chrysler 300, are you?
John:
There's no cars that you should be looking at from Chrysler, Casey.
John:
That's what I'm telling you.
Marco:
Pretty sure John's off the list now, too.
John:
Yeah, right?
John:
I would refuse a review car from Chrysler.
John:
I would refuse.
Marco:
You would refuse a review car from Ferrari.
John:
No, I would.
John:
No, I would.
John:
I would not refuse that.
John:
You totally would.
John:
You'd be like, this isn't the one I would want.
John:
Ferrari, call me.
John:
Eddie Q, get on the phone.
John:
I would not refuse that.
John:
what the hell am i am i not missing what dodge chrysler you are absolutely missing it but is it the alfa romeo they're not fiat chrysler are they maybe they are the new alphas i actually do think are pretty cool looking i i don't think i would buy one but they do look pretty cool they look horrendous but they're getting great reviews
John:
they they they came out the tops in the recent uh uh comparison with like the three series like in those types of cars the julia was number one like it is a great car i just cannot stand how it looks and and there's also the questions of like yeah but will it fall apart because you know oh fair enough yep so twilling in the chat says that he ditched his m2 for a quadrifoglio how do you how
Casey:
I don't know.
Marco:
There you go, yeah.
Marco:
That thing looks pretty cool.
Marco:
My favorite thing about this is that on its product page, along with its specs, it lists its Nürburgring lap time.
Marco:
That's the way to do it.
John:
Will you tell us if it's an alpha, Alfa Romeo?
John:
It is an alpha.
John:
Of course it's an alpha.
John:
Come on.
John:
That's just the Julia.
John:
It's just a particular model of the Julia.
John:
There's not any more alphas.
John:
I named the 4C and the Julia.
John:
What else?
Casey:
All I said was that it's not the 4C.
Casey:
That's all I've told you.
John:
And you said it's not the Giulia, too, right?
John:
I guessed the Giulia before.
Marco:
When did I say that?
Marco:
Okay, so it's the Giulia.
Marco:
Fine.
Marco:
Fine.
Marco:
I hope you get it, because this looks awesome.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, then it's the Giulia.
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Now that you're an SUV person, is it a Stelvio Quadrifoglio?
Marco:
No, it is not.
John:
Anyway, the Giulia is a really good car, and I think you'll really like it if you can stomach the looks.
John:
And if it doesn't fall apart.
Casey:
I absolutely can stomach the looks.
Casey:
The thing I might not be able to stomach is the transmission.
Casey:
The stick is only Europe.
John:
That's right.
John:
The reviews I've read say that even with the automatic, that it is a really good car.
John:
I think you will like it.
John:
I have read the same.
John:
But if you are concerned with expensive repairs and reliability, perhaps Alfa Romeo is not the brand for you.
Casey:
That's the problem.
Casey:
So, I don't know.
Casey:
We'll see if this 4C ever shows up.
Casey:
Sorry, not the 4C.
Casey:
If the Quadrifoglio ever shows up.
Casey:
My guess is probably not.
Casey:
But, yeah.
Casey:
I mean, this is basically an M3 competitor.
Casey:
And it looks to me.
Casey:
I think it looks good.
Casey:
I know you hate it.
Casey:
I think it looks good.
Casey:
And if you can leave the transmission out of it.
Casey:
Oh, man, I think this would be a fun car to own.
Casey:
So if and when I ever get a spin with it, it would be great.
Marco:
Here's my problem with this.
Marco:
Number one, price to performance ratio here.
Marco:
It looks like in order to get a car that's actually faster than your 335, you'd have to go Quadrifoglio, which is $72,000 starting price.
Marco:
which is admittedly noticeably faster, which is nice.
Marco:
It would be a nice upgrade.
Marco:
But you're then in a very high price bracket.
Marco:
Oh, yes.
Marco:
Secondly, if you're going to lose a stick and not have a DCT and be willing to spend $72,000, get a used P85D.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
At that point, if you're not going to have a stick, get a Tesla and then get a faster car.
Yeah.
John:
This makes better noises than the Tesla, even though the Tesla might be faster.
John:
This is lighter than the Tesla, too.
Marco:
You're not going to care the noises it makes when you are squished against the back of your seat from the P85D that you can get used for that price.
John:
It's not that much faster than this thing is.
John:
It's a lot faster.
John:
And this thing handles better.
Casey:
Well, I mean, if you're getting to 60 in 3.8 seconds, you're already in a place where you are way faster than what I'm used to.
Casey:
And the sound.
Casey:
Oh, that sound.
John:
Yeah, it does sound pretty good.
John:
And in this price bracket, it's 70 grand.
John:
Like I said, this came out on top against other cars, some of which cost more.
John:
So it's not like there's a cheaper car that is better that's out there today.
Marco:
um and i and i'm pretty sure if they had thrown a model s into that comparison would have come back way in the pack because despite it being really fast it is like a 5 000 pound car and it would get destroyed in all the handling tests that's fair but i i still like if this car was available in a stick or a dct i would say awesome go for it but because you care so much about that stick and because this is not available on that stick uh
Marco:
I think you would miss it.
Marco:
And if you're going to miss it, go electric where you have other great benefits and better performance anyway.
Marco:
Or get something different that has a stick and you'll probably enjoy it more.
Marco:
I assume your beloved Golf R comes in a stick, right?
Casey:
Oh, it absolutely does.
Marco:
I bet you would have more fun driving that than driving this.
Casey:
That's probably true.
Casey:
But nevertheless, I think there is something to be said for a car that is kind of rare, kind of interesting, kind of unique, and has basically a Ferrari engine within it.
Casey:
I mean, that's pretty freaking cool.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I like the idea of the Giulia Quadrifoglio quite a lot.
Casey:
But I think Marco is onto something that in pure fun, I would probably enjoy the Golf R more in part because it's all wheel drive.
Casey:
And as much as I fancy myself a really skilled driver, the fact of the matter is I'm a ham fisted driver and having all wheel drive would keep me out of trouble.
Marco:
Less trouble.
John:
well you know what i mean but i and i'd want to have three pedals i really would but you should get a civic type r if you want to have some fun and stay out of trouble maybe not fast enough to get into real trouble super fun you'll find yourself in an action movie with those you don't want that that's right you'll be you'll be racing around with all his fast and furious friends i mean the fact is like if you if you want fun you want a stick
Marco:
I know you.
Marco:
You know you.
Marco:
You know this is true.
Marco:
This car would be really fast, and you'd have fun for a couple of days, and then you'd miss your stick.
Marco:
And then after a couple of days, the novelty will have worn off.
Marco:
You won't care about who made the engine or what it was originally spec'd for.
Marco:
You will be really missing your stick.
John:
I think he's getting old.
John:
Maybe he's become soft and maybe he will like the lack of a stick and just get by on the luxurious interior and the sound of the engine.
John:
He just won't even miss shifting.
Casey:
I mean, it is possible.
Casey:
It certainly is possible.
Casey:
But I still come down on Marco's side so far.
Casey:
But, I mean, if and when I ever get a spin in this, which, to be honest, I'm assuming will never happen.
John:
You can go take a test drive at a dealer right now.
Casey:
I suppose that's true, but it's, you know, it's a lot different.
John:
Don't forget to test drive the 2018 Accord.
John:
People are loving the little stubby shifter.
John:
It's the same one from the Type R. I'll get right on that.
John:
You should.
Marco:
Oh, and when you go to a dealer to test drive this, don't tell them you're a car journalist because then they won't let you test drive it.
Marco:
It's true.
John:
Really?
John:
We saw your Twitter bio, sir.
John:
You know how to test drive this.
Casey:
I really should change my Twitter bio, shouldn't I?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Anyway, that's my story.
Casey:
But even if this is my lone foray into car journalism, it's been a tremendous amount of fun.
Casey:
And I felt very fancy and very cool and part of a small club.
John:
And you wasted it on a Jeep.
Casey:
Well, you know, you can't win them all, John Syracuse.
Casey:
You can't win them all.
John:
I just wanted to let a Mercedes, Porsche, Bentley, Ferrari know I'm available for test drives.
John:
I will tell the world about your knob feel.
Casey:
I'm surprised you're not soliciting the NSX.
John:
I would like to try an LFA if anyone has one of those available hanging around.
John:
Oh, sure.
Casey:
There's plenty just hanging out.
John:
You got one you're not using and you don't like it anymore?
John:
Send it my way.
Casey:
Twilling in the chat has one of these in white, just FYI.
Casey:
I'm assuming he just put a link in the chat room.
Marco:
You are not allowed to buy it in white.
Casey:
Red is the only color for this car.
Casey:
I'm sorry, Twilling.
Marco:
It comes in two different reds.
Marco:
Although they look like two of the same red.
Marco:
For some reason, you can get it either in red or you can spend $2,000 more and get it in the same red.
Marco:
Which one is the more expensive one, the darker one?
Marco:
I think it's the difference.
Marco:
One of them is tricote competizioni, and one of them is just regular red.
John:
Your Italian pronunciation is befitting your Ohio origins.
Casey:
Go ahead, John.
Casey:
Tell us how it's supposed to be pronounced.
John:
I don't know, but not phonetically.
John:
It's not saying Fogalio.
John:
It's just supposed to say the G. It's Siracusa.
Casey:
No Z. Siracusa.
Casey:
Siracusa.