I Just Want My Stories
Casey:
Oh, God, I can't imagine having to put a key in a steering column.
Casey:
Oh, gross.
John:
Like an animal.
John:
It's fun.
John:
Twisting the key is fun.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, John, how do you live, man?
John:
Get in, foot down on the clutch, foot on the brake, twist the key.
John:
That motion is still, you know, it's a thing.
John:
You know what's even better than that?
John:
Get in, push the gas.
John:
Yeah, I'm sure Tiff loves it when you just get out of her car and leave it rolling down the driveway.
John:
With the engine running.
John:
Running and unlocked.
Casey:
Running and unlocked.
John:
All the windows open, air conditioning on, radio blaring.
Casey:
The sick thing is you're probably serious.
Casey:
I bet this has happened at least once.
Marco:
I have not left it in gear rolling, but I have left his car running and unlocked.
Casey:
Good God.
Casey:
Oh, man, you're so spoiled.
Casey:
All right, so let's start the show, and we'll start with some neutral follow-up.
Casey:
Apparently, people pay attention to racing cars, and people pay attention to Formula One.
Casey:
I'm not really clear why.
Casey:
And apparently... Please write, Marco.
Casey:
Apparently...
Casey:
Pretty much every racing car has its paddles on the wheel.
Casey:
I was lamenting last week that the Alfa Romeo had its paddles on the column, which I've heard other car reviewers and people like that say, oh, it always has to be on the column.
Casey:
But I don't really understand why, because I didn't like it that way, and I had at the same time
Casey:
A BMW loaner, an F30 loaner, and that had the paddles on the on the wheel.
Casey:
And I much preferred that.
Casey:
So anyway, so a lot of people wrote in to say pretty much every racing car has paddles on the wheel.
Casey:
You were right.
Casey:
That's where it should be.
Casey:
And somebody and I don't I don't remember who this was.
Casey:
I apologize.
Casey:
But somebody said to me, and this is just a theory, but I mean, it makes sense to me.
Casey:
Maybe it's less of a big deal for race car drivers because their wheels don't typically do like an entire revolution.
Casey:
If you think about it, they're typically, you know, doing maybe a 30 or 60 or maybe a 90 degree turn.
Casey:
But but I would assume not often not much more than that.
Casey:
If I'm wrong, I don't really care.
Casey:
I was just just a thought exercise.
Casey:
So no big deal.
Casey:
But I just thought I'd cover that really quickly.
John:
A lot of the responses related to this were due to me musing about what F1 cars might be and knowing nothing about F1.
John:
And I had a brain fart there.
John:
That was my bad.
John:
I was like, oh, F1 cars, they don't even use paddles because they got all those buttons on the steering wheel.
John:
And while there is very often a button to shift into neutral, they still use paddles for everything.
John:
So never mind on that.
Yeah.
Casey:
I did have to give the Alfa Romeo back.
Casey:
I was very, very sad.
Casey:
It pulled away, and I wept.
Casey:
Not really, but I was sad.
Casey:
And now I'm back to my BMW.
Casey:
Life is rough, I tell you.
Casey:
God, I sound like such an intolerable piece of crap.
Casey:
All right, moving on.
Casey:
Actually, it's getting no better, as it turns out.
Casey:
Let's talk about our iPhone orders and our $1,000 phones.
Casey:
I quit.
Casey:
This is just going nowhere good.
Marco:
I think one of the biggest things that we have learned in this entire iPhone X cycle,
Marco:
is that the rumor mill is completely full of now.
Marco:
Like it's complete bullshit.
Marco:
All of it.
Marco:
It's turned out so much of it was complete bullshit.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And we were, and we were complicit or at least I'll speak for myself.
Casey:
I was complicit in it because I was, I was probably the most worried of the three of us about not getting a phone until 2020.
Casey:
And I was freaking out about it for no reason.
Casey:
Well, as well, as it turns out, spoiler alert, no reason, but, uh,
Casey:
But yeah, I was just as deep in this as anyone else, if not more so.
Casey:
And I don't know.
Casey:
I was trying to like do a retrospective, which is a word that you don't really understand, Marco, but John will.
Casey:
I was trying to have my own little one man retro meeting.
Marco:
I believe it's called a postmortem in the parking lot.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly right.
Casey:
So you do know.
Casey:
So anyway, so I was I was tossing things into the parking lot as I was as I was having my one person retro.
Casey:
And I don't really know specifically where this notion came from.
Casey:
I mean, I was one of the ones parroting it.
Casey:
So I'm guilty.
Casey:
I am 150 percent guilty.
Casey:
But where did we all get it in our brains?
Casey:
This is not just the three of us.
Casey:
This is the royal us.
Casey:
Where did all the talking heads get it in their brains that it was going to be this bad?
Casey:
Like, where did this come from?
John:
Well, I mean, the phone is supply-constrained, and people had guesses about how many they were going to make, and there were lots of stories about part shortages.
John:
So that's what it was.
John:
It was basically like, oh, they can't make enough of those 3D dot thingies, and supposedly they lowered their standards for the dot thingies to make more of them, but then Apple said, no, we didn't do that.
John:
That's BS.
John:
I mean, at this point, the past few cycles, you have to imagine that a lot of those stories about Apple's manufacturing problems and blah, blah, blah are things...
John:
motivated or not planted by competitors but like that they're that they're motivated stories that somebody wants to put that information out there to sow doubt into apple situation now they you know they don't have enough iphone 10s to go around just like they don't have enough of any they don't have enough iphone you know sevens to go around certainly not the jet black there's always shortages all right
John:
It's very difficult to tell until Apple starts reporting numbers exactly how big the shortage was.
John:
But last show, all we were talking about was, will we be able to get our phones?
John:
Forget about how many Apple sells and so on and so forth.
John:
We did touch on that briefly.
John:
But everything was just estimates.
John:
Like that one newspaper or whatever said, it looks like they're going to have four times fewer phones as in previous years.
John:
Well, we'll find out when Apple reports how many iPhones did they sell between launch and the end of the year.
John:
although they have a fiscal year i don't know how this all works but anyway we'll find out um and it could be that the numbers are dead on really they sold one fourth as many as they did last year but that's not what we're talking about here what we're talking about here is we were all staying up till 3 a.m to order phones and some of us were very very pessimistic about getting a phone anytime soon so how did it go for everybody assuming we all stayed up
Casey:
Well, I think it's pretty safe to say that Marco and I did.
Casey:
And since I've got the mic, I will say that I stayed up.
Casey:
My experience was slightly worse than the watch, than the LTE watch.
Casey:
My experience with the LTE watch was stunningly good.
Casey:
The Apple Store app was live at 3.01 or something like that.
Casey:
I was in and out in no time.
Casey:
In this instance, it was typical Apple, which is to say 5 to 10 minutes late.
Casey:
Now, in the defense of Apple, maybe that's an aggregation issue or something to do with CDNs.
Casey:
I'm now outside of my comfort zone.
Casey:
But one way or another, it was like 305-ish that everything woke up.
Casey:
I did use the Apple Store app.
Casey:
And surprisingly, I heard a fair bit of reports from Twitter and whatnot that the Apple Store app was not the pretty much flawless experience for everyone that it had been for the last few years.
Casey:
I had a few people say that they actually had better luck on
Casey:
on the website, which is stunning because anytime I've tried that, it's been a disaster.
Casey:
But anyway, about 3.05, I ordered my phone and then I rolled over and ordered Aaron's phone and got both of them and they should be here Friday.
Casey:
So it worked out really, really well for me to a degree that I did not expect.
Casey:
I did choose to ship to home.
Casey:
I was thinking about
Casey:
uh doing a store pickup which i've never done before and i know would get me my phone earlier in the day because typically ups doesn't get to us until like five or six at night on iphone day but i was scared that just going through that whole process especially when i'm unfamiliar with it would uh would slow me down too much and i would lose my chance so both of them will be delivered to the house uh sometime friday so uh i'm working from home friday if you happen to be listening to this from my job
Casey:
I will be here at the house making sure that I know... I'm sick.
Casey:
No, I mean, everyone knows exactly what's happening.
Casey:
Marco, how did it fare for you?
Marco:
Pretty similar.
Marco:
I used the app.
Marco:
As usual, the app didn't come up for me until like, you know, 305 or 306.
Marco:
And like I was in some slacks where like some people were already completing the entire orders and reporting back...
Marco:
what their dates were when they completed the order before my store was even up.
Marco:
But that happens all the time.
Marco:
I mean, the Apple ordering process with the iPhones has gotten really, really good with just that one exception.
Marco:
The only part about it that really feels unfair is...
Marco:
that there's a huge variance in when people's stores come up and it could be like 15 minutes apart.
Marco:
Like it's, it's a big variance.
Marco:
And so some people said they saw the store like at two 58.
Marco:
So, and some people didn't see the store until three 10 and like, it's a huge range.
Marco:
Usually I fall on the, on the worst side of this range.
Marco:
Like usually for me, it's, it's somewhere around like five, five or six minutes after the hour.
Marco:
And you can try like alternating between cellular and wifi.
Marco:
to be on different networks um some people suggested even trying a vpn i didn't get that far into it um i didn't think about it at three in the morning surprisingly but uh but like you know it just seems like it's a total crapshoot when your store will come up and that makes a pretty big difference in whether you get one on day one or not usually like if you're if yours comes up at 307 you're probably not getting day one delivery
Marco:
on most high-profile products.
Marco:
The same thing happened with the watch.
Marco:
Any kind of high-profile, 3AM Apple launch, usually this is a problem.
Marco:
Jet Black phone, same problem.
Marco:
So the whole rest of the system feels very good and very fair, and it has dramatically improved over the last few years.
Marco:
And it's just that one piece that feels...
Marco:
If you're on the bad end of that, it feels like you're getting screwed for no reason.
Marco:
So I hope Apple can figure out a way to improve that.
Marco:
I've never done anything on their scale before, but I have done high scale things.
Marco:
It is possible to make everything go up at almost exactly the same time.
Marco:
That is a thing that can happen on the internet.
Marco:
It's not easy, but it's possible.
Marco:
So, like, if they prioritize that, maybe they don't realize how annoying this is.
Marco:
But I hope someone... I hope whoever at Apple cares a lot about these things, about getting these right, about building into systems like the thing where if it can't contact the carrier, it, like, reserves it for you and emails you again, like, tomorrow.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
a lot of thought has gone into that system and for the most part it's great and there's just this one big glaring problem with it that i hope they can figure out a way to fix or at least at least reduce that variance in cdn availability so that like maybe everyone's store comes up in the same one minute instead of the same 15 minutes that's the only thing about the system that feels unfair a lot of it's competitive a lot of it's cutthroat but all of it feels fair except that
Casey:
Yeah, I would agree with that.
Casey:
I can't think of any particular way that they could do better with it.
Casey:
I mean, I guess maybe a lottery, but I think just like we lamented when WWDC went to a lottery, I think there's something to be said for having the dedication to wake up at three in the morning if you're on the East Coast to actually ensure that you get one initially.
Casey:
In the same way, WWDC rewarded the people who had like seven different notification strategies in order to know when tickets went on sale.
Casey:
And maybe a more fair answer would be a lottery.
Casey:
But if not that, I think you're right that this is as fair as it can get with the CDN propagation issues notwithstanding.
Marco:
And the thing is, a lottery, a few people have suggested that, I think it's such a more complicated thing than WBDC tickets.
Marco:
First of all, you're talking about allocating 5,000 conference tickets versus 10 million phones.
Marco:
There's a pretty big difference in scale.
Marco:
And of course, the phones are tied to carrier things and have to be checked out with carriers.
Marco:
The phones are way more complicated than WBDC, and there's way more of them.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The same system doesn't necessarily apply.
Marco:
Again, I think the system they have, I agree with you.
Marco:
I think it's fine.
Marco:
Vegas needs to fix that one thing.
Marco:
Anyway, so all that being said, I did wake up at 3 in the morning.
Marco:
I did place an order successfully for my iPhone X on day one delivery.
Marco:
I didn't do store pickup, just a delivery.
Marco:
uh store pickup is fine but you still have to wait in such a long line for pickup on day one like if if you're not day one and you do pick up at the store it's much faster you know there's basically no line or a very short one um but on day one you're waiting on line just like everyone else you're just waiting on like a different roped off section of the line if you if you have reservation but you're still going to be there for like two hours you know so i'm looking forward to anyway just just to conclude the rumor mill thing before we leave this topic
Marco:
In general, the rumor mill has gotten so much wrong since about a year ago or so when there was a rumor going around that one of Mark Gurman's big sources was escorted out of campus very publicly.
Marco:
I don't know if that was true or not, but it certainly does seem like there's not a lot of leaks out of Apple anymore.
Marco:
And by far...
Marco:
The most credible information we got about the iPhone X leaked out of Apple itself in their two software leaks.
Marco:
It didn't leak out of anywhere else.
Marco:
The rumor mill was basically empty.
Marco:
All they were doing for the most part was reporting on what Apple accidentally leaked.
Marco:
Um, almost everything else they reported ended up being BS.
Marco:
Like now, you know, as, as we're getting more information about the phone, people are using the phone, we're hearing more from Apple executives, like on the record stories and stuff.
Marco:
It certainly seems like the entire like touch ID under the glass thing was completely false.
Marco:
There are now multiple Apple executives directly stating that in interviews.
Marco:
And I'm inclined to believe them.
Marco:
I don't think they would lie about that kind of thing.
Marco:
I think it wouldn't serve them at all to lie about that.
Marco:
We're now hearing things like Face ID having issues and everything.
Marco:
Those are probably BS too.
Marco:
The component thing and having adjustments, Apple directly called that out and denied it, which they never do for things like that.
Marco:
That's unprecedented for the most part.
Marco:
So that also I'm inclined to believe because they so rarely ever comment on things like that publicly.
Marco:
So that was probably BS.
Marco:
It seems like anything that was about supply being super short was probably BS too.
Marco:
Because here's the thing.
Marco:
Right now, everyone, us, other podcasters, tech podcasters, the rumor sites, we were all expecting this to be a massive backorder situation.
Marco:
We were saying on the show, 2018 isn't that far away.
Marco:
We were all saying we would be lucky to get waking up at 3 a.m.,
Marco:
we'd be lucky to get it by December.
Marco:
And then it won't be too long before it's 2018.
Marco:
Well, guess what?
Marco:
Right now, today, as we record almost a week later, the latest estimates say five to six weeks.
Marco:
That's mid-December.
Marco:
A week later, you can still order it and have it come this year.
Marco:
And this year's almost over.
Marco:
So that's pretty good.
Marco:
So one of two things is true.
Marco:
Either there is way less demand for this phone than anybody thought, which I think is pretty unlikely.
Marco:
Or most of those reports about there being incredibly short supplies and everything are wrong.
Marco:
So that just adds even more to the pile of rumors that were wrong about the iPhone X. We heard so many.
Marco:
Everything about the software we heard was wrong.
Marco:
Everything about the home indicator situation, the home gesture, that was all wrong.
Marco:
We heard so much wrong stuff about the iPhone X. Really, this is...
Marco:
This has been a bad year for the Apple rumor game.
Marco:
And in some ways, it's kind of like, you know, good riddance.
Marco:
It was getting a little bit too good.
Marco:
It was getting... It was starting to get like a little too spoilery on a lot of the new products.
Marco:
You know, I'm saying this here...
Marco:
not only to call them out, but also to kind of help the world help me remind myself when I get caught up in talking about these rumors.
Marco:
Because I, too, like you said, Casey, I, too, have been totally complicit in discussing these rumors as if they were almost a sure thing or if they were a sure thing.
Marco:
Because for so long, the rumors were that good.
Marco:
For so long, in the heyday of Mark Gurman two years ago,
Marco:
They were getting every detail of every product.
Marco:
They were nailing so much before the release.
Marco:
It was actually really unfun.
Marco:
It was kind of fun to be a commentator, but it was unfun to watch the events and just see them unveil the things that you already knew about two months ago in great detail, no less.
Marco:
But we all, all of us commentators and Apple fans and readers of these sites and followers of the Apple news, we all have to now readjust from that time that now we have to probably assume that most of the rumors that we're hearing are wrong rather than assuming that they're right and then figuring out later that some of them are wrong.
John:
let me do the opposite of helping you marco and say once again that that i generally disagree with your assessment that the rumor was off before apple's leaks we knew all screen oled phone uh with face id face id leaked face id leaked so early before any software leaks
John:
and yes there were tons of reports about details that were wrong and yes apple's exec said you know we we committed to face id and we never really spent any time trying to do under the screen or aside things and stuff like that that's you know that's all well and good right but there's always a certain amount of noise so even before apple software leaks which were massive and gave us huge amounts of totally verified realsy real information
John:
um even before that we knew almost everything about this phone what it looked like the shape the size down to the millimeter the orientation of the cameras how many cameras there would be the fact that it would be all screen the fact that the screen was oled the fact that it would detect your face and that's how you would unlock it everything else is details i think that still for these phone products it is impossible so far for apple to actually keep anything like this secret
John:
there was a lot of BS and misinformation, especially the stories.
John:
And we've said this at the time we were discussing them where they're like, Apple's considering like, you know, using whether it's going to have face ID under the, and it was like a month before, or it was a touch ID on the screen.
John:
It was like a month before the, the, an intro announcement.
John:
It's like, they're like displaced in time where, um,
John:
maybe this was true a year and a half ago and we're just hearing about it now but always the rumors especially on uh a lot of the rumor sites are phrased as if it's happening now and it's nonsensical like i mean who is it uh dan is his name dan riccio what i don't know how to pronounce his name something like that i'm pretty sure you're right on the dan part it's richio i think yeah some uh yeah one of apple's uh people was in a press thing and they said he said that they had locked the design for the iphone 10 in november
John:
um that's november of last year right not not you know not now not today yeah they locked it a year ago right and yet there were rumor stories like two months ago that apple's debating what it should do with face id versus touch id under the screen and like no what do you know they're not like i mean that so we knew those were bs at the time but i still think that the combination of the rumor mill knowing so much about this phone before any leaks and then the leaks uh
John:
basically putting highlighter over the details that are right and sort of xing out the ones that are wrong uh means that we still more or less knew what was getting introduced and i don't you know one i kind of like being surprised but also kind of like hearing details so i could go either way but um just because the rumors especially motivated rumors like oh apple's having manufacturing problems oh fear uncertainty and doubt especially since things like that uh there's reasons for them to exist and they're going to be wrong everyone in a while i don't think that's
John:
that big of a deal i i i don't know i'm i'm not adjusting my attitude towards rumors because i don't mind there's a bunch of bs noise mixed in with the real information and i still think there's a ton more real information than than we used to have about things because this apple makes too many of these phones the supply chain is too leaky and we're just going to have to accept that we're more or less going to know what the next phone is going to be like and that all we have to worry about are the details and then it sometimes
John:
Like, a few weeks before intro, Apple tells us all the details accidentally by releasing a bunch of software.
Marco:
No, I mean, I think, you know, we did hear a lot of rumors that ended up being true.
Marco:
But with the rumor mill, the challenge is always knowing what parts of this are actually likely to be real or not.
Marco:
And usually, during the really good days of the rumor mills, like two years ago, you could be sure almost everything they said was actually true.
Marco:
But until Apple's software leaks...
Marco:
We didn't know whether the products would be like possibility A, B, C, or D or many of the details of that.
John:
But we knew exactly what it would look like.
John:
Well, not really.
John:
I saved some of the images of like down to the millimeter.
John:
You know, when people were selling cases for it, we knew what this thing would look like.
John:
There were still questions like, I can't tell this touch ID under that screen.
John:
Can you?
John:
Right.
John:
And same with the face ID.
John:
Like that rumor was really long.
John:
It took a really long time to coming, but didn't really get confirmed until much later.
John:
But what I'm saying is like.
John:
you know is this the next iphone and they'd show you some 3d render yeah that was that was the next iphone and we knew it a long long time ago will it recognize your face that was the only credible rumor we had other than various other places to put touch id and so that was the only debate it's like oh surely it'll do the face thing but is it gonna have touch id at all anymore under the screen on the back like that was a question but we knew like the face id would be there so i feel like we had a really good picture of this phone and it all turned out to be correct
John:
and the details that turned out to be wrong were interesting especially when we were discussing you know touch id in the back and the best one was the the game of telephone rumor about touch id being on the home button do you remember that rumor right and that that's explicable now you see how it works like because you have to double tap the the the power button to to make uh apple pay work and it puts a little highlight thing over it right so somebody like in this game of telephone uh
John:
knew about that and you know through seven different people it becomes something touch id in the power button which never really made any sense because it's not big enough but anyway even things like that i love seeing after the fact going oh that's that's what they were confused about there was never touch id in the power button but somebody knew that piece of information and it got like you know lost in translation and then all of a sudden this rumor came out of it so i think that's just par for the course of rumors
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I feel like the rumor mill was so sketchy.
Casey:
And then around the time of the lost iPhone 4, I think sources got really good.
Casey:
And then in the last year or so, like I think Marco had said, sources have been not as good.
Casey:
Because I feel like we knew, even without software releases, we knew exactly what this stuff would look like to the Pixel, so to speak.
Casey:
I understand that's a terrible analogy.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
uh now if it wasn't for software releases we know we know the broad strokes you're right john but i don't think without the home pod debacle we would have known as specifically as we have in prior years but i don't know i don't think it's broad strokes like we didn't have if it wasn't for that phone left in a bar
John:
we wouldn't have known exactly what the iPhone 4 looked like until somebody found one.
John:
But we knew exactly what the iPhone X would look like.
John:
Maybe some surface details we didn't know.
John:
I feel like the iPhone 8, we didn't have a really good grasp on surface details, maybe.
John:
But when you have millimeter-perfect measured drawings of the phone months ahead of time that turn out to be 100% accurate, so accurate that people could build cases based on them,
John:
That is unprecedented.
John:
We didn't have that for the iPhone 3GS, for the iPhone 4.
John:
Back then, being left in a bar was the only way we were going to get that kind of thing.
Marco:
But there are so many... There's so much noise, as you said, John.
Marco:
I feel like part of the Apple rumor game is always trying to figure out what this will actually...
Marco:
Everybody who floats their head near Apple or is a friend of a nephew of a supplier or something, everybody who is anywhere near Apple can leak something about what they think they might be working on because they had one part made or they heard from a friend of a friend of a friend who works at a factory or something like that.
Marco:
Or even people on campus who leak, people inside the company, they can leak about things that they've seen or heard about around campus.
Marco:
but none of that has a strong correlation to what actually gets released and how things actually ship and what the final version of things actually look like or do or work so the challenge of the room has always been okay you have all this information 10 of it is true but you don't know what 10 until the event right and that part has has
Marco:
reverted back to as bad as it used to be.
Marco:
That part was better two years ago, and that part is now back to where it was 10 years ago, which is basically all over the place and not that useful.
Marco:
So that's why I'm saying it's not that we won't have seen many of the details ahead of time.
Marco:
But we won't know which of the details we've seen are true and which will ship.
Marco:
And that's the kind of thing that used to leak a lot better than it does now.
Marco:
And that's what I'm very happy about now.
Marco:
But again, that's also what I need to now adjust myself to, by default, disbelieve rumor sites rather than by default believing them the way I've been doing the last two years.
John:
I don't know if you want to change your defaults, but maybe just make it a setting.
John:
And on this front, I think the iPhone X was actually a tricky case, too, because so much was changing.
John:
We knew so much was changing with the iPhone X. So with so much up for grabs, there's less sort of bedrock that you can say, well, it's an iPhone, and these two minor things change.
John:
Once you get rid of all the stuff on the front and make it all screen...
John:
There are many possibilities with how that can go, especially before the software leaks.
John:
It was that's why it was I did like, well, what happened to touch a day?
John:
Where does it go?
John:
Is it on your screen?
John:
Is it on the back?
John:
Is it on the power button?
John:
Like, you know, because more things were up for grabs.
John:
If this pretend that 10 doesn't exist and this is just the eight, you know, there wouldn't have been.
John:
a weird rumor about touch id being in the power button on the eight because they'd be like well touch id is where it always is like look there's the phone like they're you know only a few things are changing so the bigger the break from the past the more possibility is for random guesses and rumors and misheard things because just so much more seems possible right so you entertain it as as a possibility because you know who knows what they'll do and then of course the software leaks sort of you know refine that all but we'll see next it was presumably next phone they will not have
John:
a catastrophic software leak like this and we'll get to play the game all the way up to the end where we'll have you know it will be more constrained i bet there won't be such you know the the one after the 10 is not going to be as a radical a departure as the 10 is from the seven right and we'll have a bunch of different competing theories and we'll see how we we do on them but it still seems like uh you know a couple months before our iphone time next year we will have
John:
measure drawings of exactly what the phone will look like maybe we won't know the exact colors and names though we still got that going for us all we know is that it'll be a new shade of space gray yeah will they ever run out they should just we just line them up and see you know when do they have to go from like you know 8-bit color to 16-bit color to contain all contain all the space grays
John:
All this is to say, let me tell you about my iPhone.
Casey:
I was just about to ask.
John:
Um, so I, uh, the first time I ever did this or getting a phone for my wife, we both ended up waking up because really when one person wakes up, like, look, everyone's going to be up.
John:
Um,
John:
I was very unlucky in the CDN lottery.
John:
The store did not come up for me for like 10 or 12 minutes.
John:
What I eventually got through on first was actually the website.
John:
So I'm in the category of one of the people where furiously forced quitting and relaunching the app on Wi-Fi and LTE did not let me get to it.
John:
I got it first on the website, but because my wife was also doing this on multiple devices, she was doing it on her Mac and her phone,
John:
before i went through the auto process right up to the end because i knew what she wanted but before i hit the button by that point i had walked downstairs and wanted to check are you are you in the same process turns out she was she was right at the buy step as well so i didn't actually pull the trigger on my buy she pulled the trigger on hers two to three weeks that's when my ship date is so i did not get day one i was unlucky in the unintentional cdn lottery
John:
um but two or three weeks is not that bad you know she was she was happy with it because she was also worried that it would be a really long time and she didn't want to wait a really long time because she's kind of getting sick of her phone so two or three weeks is acceptable to her
John:
oh i forgot yeah she got the big one and we did a verizon and they did the thing where it's like we're having trouble contacting your carrier which is a vast improvement i tweeted uh you know i tweeted that might have seemed like snark but wasn't and i call it progress this is progress this is better than it was before it's still sad that they you know the carriers suck and they can't make this work but at least it doesn't stop the process but there was a you know a good 24 hours of uh fretting because you go through the process and it's like
John:
uh well i could contact the carrier but don't worry your phone is reserved and you go to bed you know 3 30 thinking everything's fine right but then the next day you start to worry as everyone else says look at my order look at my ship date blah blah blah blah and you have nothing you just have a screen that you saw last night at 3 30 in the morning that said you had a phone but there's no proof that even happened right and you have an email that says oh we'll contact you when it's time for you to complete your order
John:
Right.
John:
But then you're just waiting for an email.
John:
It's like, so when, when are you going to email me and tell me I can complete my order?
John:
Then you start worrying.
John:
They're going to email me and tell me I can complete my order.
John:
And that's going to count as my order time.
John:
Like that.
John:
I didn't reserve a spot in line at 3am, but it's really just going to be when I get the email, especially since they say you'll have 24 hours to complete your order.
John:
So there's a little bit of time pressure.
John:
And it was a really long time.
John:
Like everybody else had gotten their orders and they got their dates and everything.
John:
We still hadn't received the email.
John:
But finally, towards the end of the day, the next day, got an email, completed the order.
John:
And that's when we saw the two to three week thing.
John:
So that's not the best system.
John:
It's a little bit nerve wracking.
John:
I would I would like it if.
John:
I could actually go through the process and give them the money and complete the order and just say, just settle up, figure it out with Verizon later.
John:
Because obviously already reserving me a spot.
John:
I don't see why I have to be involved with the time-delayed retry, right?
John:
Apple can do that on their end.
John:
So that was a little bit nerve-wracking, but it all came out well in the end.
Marco:
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Casey:
So tell me about your iMac.
Marco:
It's back.
Marco:
So here's what happened.
Marco:
So the Genius Bar or Grove or Forest or whatever had it for a little less than a week.
Marco:
In a little less than a week, they replaced the panel.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
Oh, and then the very last day, somebody called me to ask if they could format my hard drive.
Marco:
Even though I told them when I dropped it off, yes, I have everything backed up.
Marco:
You can replace it or format it if you need to.
Marco:
They said they needed to format my hard drive because there was some bad data on the platters.
Marco:
By the way, this is an SSD-only iMac.
Marco:
There were some bad data on my platters, and that was causing my GPU overheating issue, and that they had to reformat the hard drive to get rid of the bad blocks on my platters.
Marco:
And so...
Marco:
I was just like, really?
Marco:
Can you explain that a little bit more?
Marco:
And every explanation I got was worse than the last one.
Marco:
And I didn't pull the I'm a nerd card.
Marco:
I didn't tell them how wrong they were.
John:
Why did you bother pressing them on that, didn't you?
John:
Did you think there was a real explanation hiding under there, or do you just want to hear them squirm as they try to rephrase it another way?
Marco:
I was like, how can that affect the GPU?
Marco:
Okay, I said GPU every single time I talked about this fan.
Marco:
Every time.
Marco:
Like, look, the GPU runs too hot.
Marco:
I monitor.
Marco:
I can even tell you the temperature.
Marco:
It runs too hot.
Marco:
Then the fan spins up.
Marco:
Well, it's doing almost nothing.
Marco:
Okay?
Marco:
The GPU... And I kept... I said it when I dropped it off.
Marco:
I said it when they were doing testing.
Marco:
I said it everywhere.
Marco:
Every single time that they said it back to me, they said...
Marco:
oh, this is why your fan's running hot.
Marco:
I'm like, no, no, no, it's more detailed than that.
Marco:
Trust me, I'm trying to help you figure this out.
Marco:
Like, nope, they didn't hear it.
Marco:
So, you know, look, I had a mediocre experience, right?
Marco:
The people were very nice.
Marco:
They didn't fix any of my problems except for the screen.
Marco:
Oh, and now I have a hot green pixel in the middle of the screen.
Marco:
So, you know, I'm not going to have them touch it again.
Marco:
This is why I don't, like, whenever people, whenever I complain about a problem with hardware I have,
Marco:
And people are like, why don't you just bring it in for repair?
Marco:
This is why.
Marco:
Because it doesn't usually get the problems fixed.
Marco:
And, you know, sometimes if it's easy, like when I had a bad lightning port on my phone, that was easy.
Marco:
They swapped it out, done, great experience.
Marco:
But when it's like a nuanced issue with a desktop computer, you know, I had to haul it there, go without a desktop for a week...
Marco:
get it back, put all my data back on because they formatted the drive for no reason.
Marco:
Fan still runs too fast when the GPU runs hot for no apparent reason.
Marco:
It wasn't bad data on my platters and my SSD.
Marco:
Surprise, surprise.
Marco:
And so, you know, I appreciate that they tried.
Marco:
But this is why I don't do this usually.
John:
I usually take the opposite approach where I feel like once the seal is broken, once I've gone to and from the store once, I'm going to continue to go back until, as John Roddick would say, I get satisfaction.
John:
That's why I brought my Thunderbolt display back three times.
John:
So if they replaced the screen and it came back with a hot green subpixel, that would go back immediately just for the screen.
John:
Because it's like, look, I've gone through this hassle to get the screen.
John:
I'm going to keep going through it until I get a perfect screen back.
John:
Unless there's some policy about them not doing it.
John:
But I don't know what the deal is.
John:
But I would try, right?
John:
And my attempt to explain the erasing of the disk, like maybe the cutting the ends off the roast reason behind this poor person trying to explain to you why they want to erase your hard drive, I have had many times in the past...
John:
um problems that make the computer do weird stuff that have to do with like corrupted libraries somewhere right so like some some sort of file on disk does not check some correctly it has the wrong data in it is who knows why like hfs plus errors uh you know could actually be a hardware related failure who knows um and you say like well how why would that manifest uh in the gpu getting hot
John:
there's enough tiny little things all over the place, uh, loadable pieces of code and various library files and stuff that it's possible that one of them could be loaded and only a certain code path hits the corrupted part and that causes it to crash.
John:
And then it immediately relaunches.
John:
And that happens over and over and over again.
John:
And that causes some subsystem to work harder than it should, because it's basically, you know, probabilistically constantly crashing depending on when the code path that hits the corrupted part of the library is hit.
John:
And you don't see that, except maybe in a console line somewhere if you're lucky, and that would cause temperature to go up.
John:
So that's my most charitable interpretation of why there might be a legit reason for them to erase your disk.
John:
Although that's why a lot of people say, I did a combo update and it fixed everything.
John:
Like just reinstalling the OS often fixes it too, because it'll replace that library with the correct version of it again.
John:
um stuff like that has happened it probably doesn't explain a temperature specific thing i would expect to see more crashes or whatever but i'll bet that that issues like that are one of the reasons why they routinely want to erase your drive just to reduce the number of variables essentially like they should have just said we don't know but we're out of ideas and this is always the last thing we try and sometimes it fixes it so it's worthwhile uh and so they did it
Casey:
Okay, so we had somebody write in who is an anonymous AppleCare advisor, and they said that they were servicing a 2017 MacBook Pro 13-inch for a space bar that stopped functioning.
Casey:
AppleCare had determined the issue was related to accidental damage and therefore was not covered under warranty.
Casey:
They held their MacBook Pro for a re-quote price of $475.
Casey:
Holy smokes.
Casey:
Although the customer disputes prying the key off in an effort to fix the issue herself, I don't doubt that she probably did.
Casey:
The point is, our customers would have no reason to try and perform surgery on their brand new laptops with their car keys if the keyboards worked reliably in the first place.
Casey:
$500 to fix this keyboard?
Casey:
That is bananas.
John:
I thought this was a good story because it shows just how things can go wrong.
John:
Thus far, we've been talking about it like, oh, we don't really know what the reliability issue is, but these things are all still under warranty and eventually they won't be and it will be worse.
John:
But this is, you know, this is an example of good Apple customer service in the end, but sort of a trap for customers.
John:
Like...
John:
if this happens to you you get a new laptop and the spacebar stops working and you decide to try to pry the keycap off now maybe you're just frustrated maybe you're impatient maybe you don't want to while it bother taking the store maybe you've pried the keycaps off past apple laptops and have fixed it yourself by blowing stuff out or whatever but either way if you do this and like and you know and when you do with these with these new keyboards
John:
There's no way to get it back on successfully.
John:
You're doomed.
John:
Prying off the keycaps is not a thing you should do.
John:
It's not even a thing that Apple repair centers do.
John:
That's why they have to replace the whole top of your computer.
John:
If you do that and then bring it into the Apple store, they're going to say, well...
John:
uh i see your problem you pried off your spacebar and that's not covered under warranty because you essentially damaged your own computer and if you said no no i've only pried it off because before the spacebar wasn't working you know by the letter of the of the apple apple care law it's like no if you pry the key if you try to repair your own computer and mess it up we don't pay for that
John:
Now, you know, the reason this is good to Apple customer service is that the person involved was, you know, able to make an exception and override the repair center or whatever.
John:
Like, the genius understands, like, the only reason you pry this off is because it was broken.
John:
I don't think you're sitting around deciding to pry off your keycaps for the hell of it, right?
John:
And so they did the right thing and are letting this get repaired under warranty, but...
John:
When the warranty runs out, we just go wait for the first person to have a stuck key at exactly the time their warranty runs out and realize stuck key equals $475.
John:
And that's going to be a very, very sad person.
John:
A person who will probably start considering how convenient it might be to use their laptop without ever touching the keyboard on it.
John:
Maybe they are in the market for a new Mac mini.
Casey:
I don't remember which show it was.
Casey:
I heard this on, but did you hear that repairing the back glass on an iPhone 10 is something like $500?
Marco:
Yeah, because it's like a full replacement cost, basically.
Marco:
So yeah, it's like over $500.
Marco:
And notice AppleCare costs $200 now on the iPhone X. I forgot to ask, did you guys all get AppleCare?
Marco:
I did not.
Marco:
Ooh, living dangerously.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I buy it for TIFFs because she wants the peace of mind of knowing... And she does drop her phone occasionally.
Marco:
We do have cases.
Marco:
We have yet to break one.
Marco:
But still, for hers, we wanted to buy it because that makes her feel better.
Marco:
For mine, I never have.
Marco:
And my policy has been... Because now AppleCare is like... I think it's like 130 or 140-ish for the regular iPhone 8s.
Marco:
And then for the iPhone X, it's 200.
Marco:
My thinking here is...
Marco:
The first time I have to have a very expensive repair, I will reconsider my policy of having not spent $200 every year up until that point.
Marco:
But until that happens, and unless that happens, I'm going to keep not spending $200 to protect the phone that I don't necessarily need to be protected.
Marco:
And we'll let it ride from there.
Marco:
I'm the kind of person who I don't really drop my stuff.
Marco:
I've never dropped gadgets before, like...
Marco:
I think I've dropped a phone in the total of time that I've had iPhones the entire last 10 years.
Marco:
I think I've dropped it maybe twice.
Marco:
And neither time it was significantly damaged.
Marco:
So I hope I don't need it.
Marco:
And if I start needing it, then I'll eat that first repair as a life lesson and I'll start getting it then.
Marco:
Until that happens, I'm saving 200 bucks a year.
Casey:
i did get apple care plus on my iphone 7 and if you recall i dropped it when i was running with it because i'm an idiot and that was my first uh my first iphone casualty i have also developed a deep scratch in the screen since that happened i have no earthly idea how so the good news is if i get this repaired a second time the apple care will have paid for itself but this is the first phone i've run in a long time without a case and
Casey:
And $200 on top of $1,200 or whatever I paid is a lot of money.
Casey:
So I have a leather case that will be a few days late behind my phone because I just ordered it today.
Casey:
And I think I'm going to go back to having a leather case and hopefully not destroying my phone.
Marco:
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Casey:
John, it is all coming up, Milhouse, with regard to the Apple TV.
Casey:
Tell us about this.
John:
Yeah, so a bunch of essentially announcements from Apple because they have videos, this strange sort of out of time, not at WWDC, but very much like WWDC videos, explaining some of the new APIs in tvOS 11.2, which is not yet released, but presumably will be in beta soon.
John:
So the very first thing I did was went out to my Apple TV and
John:
turned on beta software updates which is a thing that you can do if you sign up for the beta program you get a menu thing that says in the software update thing do you want to also consider beta updates i said yes and i said please update me and it did an update but then when i rebooted i was still on 11.1 and now every time i check for an update it says i have the latest version so i do not have 11.2 i don't know if anybody has it maybe that beta is not out yet but anyway what why do i want 11.2 well a couple reasons first
John:
There is a new API called AV Display Manager.
John:
Actually, I don't even know if it's a new API.
John:
Unfortunately, I have not had time to watch this video.
John:
But there's new APIs that allow you as an app developer to switch video display modes.
John:
Confusingly, there's a second set of screenshots showing what the tvOS thing will look like where there are options now to say automatically match the frame rate of the source video and automatically match the HDR-ness of the source video.
John:
and you can turn them both on and and for a little while i was confused well which is it is it that application developers have to update their apps to switch modes or is it that apple tv will simply detect the frame rate and quality of the of the video that's displaying in apple tv will switch modes as far as i can tell it is you need both for this to happen
John:
Developers need to update their apps to use a new API, and the new API won't actually switch your mode unless the preference is set in your Apple TV to say, hey, if an application says that it wants to change the mode to 24 frames per second or whatever, or some multiple of that, allow it to do it.
John:
uh again i haven't actually installed this beta because they won't send it to me so i'm not entirely sure so i'm just going off uh several articles on this topic we'll put a link in the show notes the arts technical one which i think just summarizes the information that's provided but anyway this is all good news the good news is you will not have to go to that menu and pick from umpteen different formats every every time you're going to play a video which of course you know the exact frame rate for
John:
And it's also good news with people with HDR TVs because previously, apparently, if you turned HDR on and played some non-HDR video, it would try to display it in HDR and make it look all gross, which is just terrible.
John:
I didn't know that because I don't have an HDR TV.
John:
My only fear now is that...
John:
these features will come and they will be 4k only not apple tv 4k only but will only be available if you have a 4k television because right now i can't tell the apple tv to output at some multiple 24 uh hertz to my television because i have a standard definition a non-4k television
John:
And I don't have a 24 hertz option or any multiple thereof, which is a shame.
John:
If you have a 4K TV, you do.
John:
I'm hoping all this mode switching and everything is not confined to 4K like these other settings are.
John:
So we'll see.
John:
But I'm excited about it.
John:
Things are going in the right direction.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's ask ATP.
Casey:
Drew wants to know, what do you recommend for antivirus on High Sierra?
Casey:
Don't run it.
Casey:
Don't know.
John:
Yeah, I had someone ask me this at work, too.
John:
And the reason I put this question in there is that this is a surprisingly common question, especially for new Mac users.
John:
What should I get for antivirus?
John:
My answer to all these people is do not install antivirus software on your Mac.
John:
Maybe that sounds terrible.
John:
And maybe people think I'm an old fogey and really in this modern day and age, you need antivirus software and blah, blah.
John:
But from my experience over many, many years, being forced to run many different kinds of antivirus software at work, I hate all of them and all of them made my Mac worse.
John:
And at home, I have never, ever, ever, ever run antivirus software on my Macs.
John:
And as far as I'm aware, I have never had any problems with viruses.
John:
So my recommendation is do not run antivirus software on your Mac.
John:
It's all bad.
Casey:
Marco, any other thoughts?
Marco:
I think exactly what John says, minus the work experience part.
Marco:
I mean, at this point, I would say that antivirus software on your Mac, I think, probably is a bigger threat of itself being malware than any malware that you would find.
John:
and even when it's working correctly not that it's malware but it messes with your computer it like it makes it slow it makes it annoying it makes things not work that we're supposed to work the headaches you will get from the the antivirus software itself far outweigh the supposed protection that and honestly it's not going to protect you anyway like i mean the real question is like just find a longtime mac user maybe not me like you know 1984 mac user but but uh you know humble brag
John:
Right.
John:
Well, I'm just saying, like, find someone who's been using a Mac for years and ask them, what do you run for antivirus?
John:
Like, can you find a Mac user who has not run antivirus and has been, you know, overrun by viruses like Marco Casey?
John:
Have you ever run antivirus software on your Mac?
Casey:
My work computer, but that's because it's compulsory, not because I choose it.
John:
Yeah, but I mean your home one.
John:
Nope.
John:
Even when I had a work computer, I didn't.
Marco:
Have you ever had any problem with viruses?
Marco:
Not only have I never had a problem with a Mac virus, I've never even heard of anybody else having a problem with one ever.
John:
Nope.
John:
same yeah i mean more likely it's going to be you know social engineering and getting you to click on some button you're not supposed to none of that you know and not to say there aren't vulnerabilities max are totally vulnerable to malware and viruses 100 and humans are completely vulnerable to social engineering and things that trick you into clicking something you're not supposed to right but the question wasn't like are max vulnerable to virus they are the question was should i install antivirus software and the answer to that is no because that software is bad and makes your mac worse
John:
And remember that Apple does have very rudimentary anti-malware stuff that you're getting whether you know it or not.
John:
They do push updates to it when they identify new malware.
John:
It's not going to save you from everything, but it's not as if you're completely unprotected.
Casey:
So this next one was an email submission, and I thought it was really interesting.
Casey:
Charlie Ellman writes, if iOS and macOS were available to install and integrate with any hardware, would you still use an iPhone and a Mac?
Casey:
And he continues, for this thought experiment, assume that it works well on all devices, none of the Windows driver crap.
Casey:
Software updates would happen just as regularly, none of the Android fragmentation crap.
Casey:
You could use any of the new hardware on other devices without issue, NFC, Microsoft Pen and Dial, Google Pixel Squeeze, etc.
Casey:
And the prices don't change, meaning the Galaxy S8 wouldn't cost as much as an iPhone, the Surface Book wouldn't cost as much as a Touch Bar MacBook, etc.
Casey:
I have thought about this for several days now because I was the one who added this to the show notes.
Casey:
And I don't think I have any really strong answers because I really, really do think for me that the best hardware out there is Apple hardware.
Casey:
I would probably at least flirt with a ThinkPad, especially that retro one that just came out.
Casey:
I know John is getting really sick to his stomach hearing me talk about this, but man, I think that looks good.
Casey:
But anyway, I don't think I've ever seen a phone that I've longed for.
Casey:
And I don't really ever see computers that I'm terribly enthusiastic about outside of what comes from Apple.
Casey:
And I don't know if it's Stockholm Syndrome at this point or what, but other than maybe a ThinkPad, I don't think there's anything.
Casey:
But what about you, John?
John:
i would definitely uh use non-apple hardware because i would get basically the modern equivalent of my 2008 mac pro i'd get a big computer with room for lots of stuff inside including a really big uh gaming video card and apple doesn't sell anything like that so i would have gotten that long ago like that's what i'm waiting around for is that you know a mac pro that i want to buy if i could get third-party hardware and run mac os and not have to deal with any of the you know
John:
hackintosh stuff or whatever yes i definitely would um for phones i also have never seen a phone that has made me think i would rather have that hardware than my iphone hardware even if it's down to something like uh mini usb versus lightning that was no contest and usbc versus lightning i think i still kind of prefer lightning so i don't think there's any hard phone hardware that would tempt me
John:
especially now that we have like the sevens the six and seven size phone and we'll see what i think of the 10 when it gets here um but for my desktop mac computer in the absence of a mac pro that suits my needs i would definitely be running third-party hardware
Casey:
Marco?
Marco:
I've never seen another phone that I actually thought, like, I would like to stop using my iPhone and go use that, please.
Marco:
It has never come close.
Marco:
I was very impressed when I saw the, what is it, the Samsung S8?
Marco:
Not the Note, but the one that came out like six months ago that was edge-to-edge-ish.
Marco:
Like that one, I was very impressed when I saw that.
Marco:
But it wasn't so compelling that I want to lose everything I know about the hardware.
Marco:
Now, this is a great question in the sense that it assumes that we can still use the software that we like, all the Apple software.
Marco:
Because that really is... That's what matters more.
Marco:
Ultimately, I would take...
Marco:
apple hardware that makes me miserable before i would leave mac os and ios for the alternatives um so it's a good question um for the phones yeah no way for you know tablets no um for laptops maybe i think i might consider using pc laptops especially oh you absolutely would after all this kvetching about the keyboard you absolutely would go to a different laptop well pc laptops are kind of ugly though
Marco:
Well, I don't care about the look so much as the functionality for me.
Marco:
So anyway, I'm very happy right now with just having an older Apple laptop.
Marco:
In the future, when that plan becomes untenable, I hope their modern ones at that point, again, are better for me.
Marco:
Then I'll just switch to the modern ones.
Marco:
Or even if they're not better...
Marco:
Maybe I'll just want to suck it up and deal with it so I don't have to mess with Hackintoshes or old laptops or anything else.
Marco:
But if I could run macOS perfectly well on something better from the PC world, or at least better for my preferences...
Marco:
Sure, I would consider that.
Marco:
There isn't a lot out there that's honestly that much better.
Marco:
It's very similar to when I mentioned a couple episodes ago how reviewers always positively review whenever there's a new Surface book or whenever there's a new Google phone, a new Nexus or Pixel phone.
Marco:
The reviews are always really positive, and then the reviewers don't end up using them.
Marco:
They're like, oh, this is a great phone for somebody else.
Marco:
And then they switch back to their iPhone and their MacBook the next day.
Marco:
With a lot of this alternative stuff, it's hard to get good quality long-term reviews.
Marco:
And oftentimes, the long-term reviews are a lot less positive than the initial ones were.
Marco:
So it's hard to really know, as somebody who admittedly does not try non-Apple hardware, almost ever, it's hard for me to really know how good other stuff is.
Marco:
But certainly, I would have an open mind to it.
Marco:
And on the desktop, similar to John...
Marco:
Right now, Apple doesn't make what I need.
Marco:
They've said they're going to, so I hope they do.
Marco:
Unlike John, I don't need my Mac Pro or my Mac desktop.
Marco:
I don't need it to be a standard tower with a whole bunch of card slots for gaming cards or drive bays or anything else.
Marco:
I don't actually need that.
Marco:
The trash can Mac Pro would have been great for me if they just updated it.
Marco:
That would have been great.
Marco:
They didn't, which is unfortunate.
Marco:
But if they could just deliver me that with not the overheating GPUs issue, maybe.
Marco:
Deliver me that with modern internals that can drive a 5K display.
Marco:
And that would be great.
Marco:
I would love that.
Marco:
Not a lot of other people would, but I would.
Marco:
So I'd be totally fine with that.
Marco:
But in the meantime, they don't have that.
Marco:
And I don't know when their new Mac Pro is coming.
Marco:
I assume that it's hopefully next year.
Marco:
Hopefully in the earlier part of the year.
Marco:
But I really have no idea.
Marco:
So desktops, I would use non-Apple hardware because I feel like that's where it would matter the least that I would use non-Apple hardware.
Marco:
You're not touching it really.
Marco:
You can use someone else's screen and it's not that bad.
Marco:
It wouldn't be that big of a deal to use someone else's desktop, especially if you build a tower.
Marco:
It's under your desk.
Marco:
You barely even see it.
Marco:
But yeah, it's a cool question.
Marco:
I like thinking about this.
Marco:
It kind of prompts you to look around the PC and Android worlds to see what the alternatives even are.
Marco:
But ultimately, I don't find a lot of them very compelling.
Marco:
it would be kind of interesting to build my own computer again i used to do that you know i used to build build my own pc and i really enjoyed that hobby that was a really fun hobby yeah yeah i agree it would be kind of interesting to see to see like what that's like now you know from the little glances i've seen here and there from people posting about it and stuff it doesn't it doesn't seem like it's that different it seems like most of it is actually about the same just like you know now there's like there's been like five new versions of atx since then but like it's still like fairly similar yeah
Marco:
um you know now i think everybody water cools now before you know back then it was much more of a uh of a specialized thing that most people didn't do uh now water cooling is much more common and there's a lot more blue leds which i would not consider a feature um so it would be kind of fun to build computers again uh but ultimately you know if apple if apple gives me a really nice mac pro i'll be pretty happy with that
John:
I forgot to address laptops because I don't like laptops, but if forced to pick a laptop, would you stick with the Apple one?
John:
I'm in a bind because I think all the laptops except for the Microsoft ones, I find them less pleasing looking than the Apple ones.
John:
And, you know, that makes a difference to me.
John:
And it's not like it's like you can build your own laptop like you can with desktop.
John:
Right.
John:
So you don't have as many options there.
John:
But all I've heard about the Microsoft laptops and their transformable tablets and stuff like that is that they have all sorts of weird reliability problems and durability problems with the fabric and everything.
John:
That line of computers is the most appealing to me, but I would be wary of actually buying one for myself because of all the reliability problems I've heard for the service book.
Yeah.
John:
You know, unlike Casey, I don't have a thing for the ThinkPad, so I just don't think there's a lot of laptop hardware out there.
John:
Although if pressed, if I was forced, I would probably still just grin and bear it and get an ugly PC thing just so I could have ports and battery life and all the things that we've complained about a million times.
Marco:
I will say there was a really nice segment on Back to Work about, I think it was last week's episode, Microsoft reps offered to send Dan Benjamin a Surface Book.
Marco:
Honestly, I don't know.
Marco:
I can't tell you which model.
Marco:
Some kind of Surface Book to just try out.
Marco:
Something that could be a tablet and a laptop.
Marco:
Can they all do that?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Whatever.
Marco:
Anyway, they sent him one to try out, and he talked about it on the show, and the discussion was very, very good.
Marco:
You know, Dan is somebody who is mostly an Apple person, but he has recent PC experience also.
Marco:
And so to hear his impressions of the service book were very good.
Marco:
And overall, to spoil it, overall his impressions of it were pretty positive.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
It's worth hearing that to know, like, to have kind of a glimpse into the other side of, like, what it's like when a mostly Apple person talks a lot about a modern, nice Windows laptop.
Marco:
And especially, you know, like hearing about, like, what it's like to have crossovers between tablet mode and, you know, being able to have, like, a pen or touch input in a desktop OS.
Marco:
You know, Dan came out of that basically saying, like,
Marco:
Apple should have something like this for Mac OS.
Marco:
And if you're a really big fan of the iPad, you probably shouldn't listen to this episode.
Marco:
But I think there's a lot to consider there that they bring up.
Marco:
So that's worth a listen if you're interested in this kind of stuff.
Casey:
Finally, Tim Walker wants to know, any thoughts about Apple firing an engineer after his daughter posted a hands-on video of the iPhone X on YouTube?
Casey:
So the chief summarizer in chief had us on.
Casey:
Basically, what happened was, and I think it was a little while ago, but certainly after the announcement.
Casey:
An Apple employee who we have later found out works somewhere in the RF team, I guess, the radio frequency team, had his daughter into Cafe Max and she was filming a vlog and she also was handed his phone like he handed her his phone.
Casey:
which was an iPhone X, again, post-announcement, but before everyone had them.
Casey:
And she was flipping through the home screen.
Casey:
And I haven't done the Kremlinology on this, but apparently... Wow, that's kind of a loaded term now, isn't it?
Casey:
I haven't done the Zapruder film or however you pronounce it on this.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
Anyways, I guess there were some apps that you wouldn't expect to see.
Casey:
Somebody said something about a QR code that you wouldn't expect to see.
Casey:
So there was some unreleased stuff on this phone for sure.
Casey:
Well, this video somehow or another got popular.
Casey:
And I say that only because the young woman who had filmed it and put it on YouTube had said, you know, I have in so many words, I have no followers.
Casey:
I don't know how this became popular, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
But somehow or another it did.
Casey:
And they have since fired her dad.
Casey:
They fired this engineer.
Casey:
And Tim Walker wants to know, well, how do we feel about that?
Casey:
And my initial reaction was, man, that's kind of crappy.
Casey:
Because the thing was already announced.
Casey:
Everyone knew what it was.
Casey:
Like...
Casey:
What's the big deal?
Casey:
But then I found out, well, there was some unreleased software on there and maybe this QR code thing.
Casey:
I guess there may have been a code name or two shown on the screen at one point or another.
Casey:
And that made me less confident that Apple was being a bunch of jerks.
Casey:
And then I was reminded of when, Marco, you and I went to Apple last year in 2016.
Casey:
And we went to aisle one or one aisle.
Casey:
I always get it backwards.
Casey:
We went to the main building and then we went to the theater that they would occasionally do product announcements in.
Casey:
And there's a Steve Jobs quote outside the theater.
Casey:
And I think both of us, or certainly I, took a picture of it, put it on Instagram or something like that.
Casey:
And one of our mutual friends who works at Apple actually privately wrote me and was like, who was letting you take a picture on campus?
Casey:
That's BS.
Casey:
And the picture was of a Steve Jobs quote.
Casey:
And he was genuinely perturbed that this picture was taken, much less posted anywhere.
Casey:
He was perturbed that my escort had allowed me to do that, which I think is kind of freaking ridiculous.
Casey:
But I tell this story to just emphasize how deep this lies within Apple employees.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so in the end of the day, I think, you know what, the dude knew the rules, like she shouldn't have been filming in the first place and definitely should not have seen pre-release software.
Casey:
If it was just that he handed her the phone and it was off me, I don't see that as that big a deal.
Casey:
But since apparently there's some, there was some unreleased stuff on that device that changes my tune quite heavily.
Casey:
Marco, how do you feel?
Marco:
I come down a little harder than you, but nearby, basically.
Marco:
None of us have ever worked at Apple.
Marco:
And this is internal hiring policy stuff.
Marco:
And it's hard to...
Marco:
say what should or shouldn't happen based on what we know from the outside of the situation.
Marco:
Because we obviously don't know everything because we don't work there.
Marco:
We don't know this person.
Marco:
We don't know everything that was inadvertently revealed in that video or could have been revealed or what the policies exactly are written.
Marco:
Apple's not that keen on sharing things like that with the public.
Marco:
But I can say that when we were there...
Marco:
The last thing I would have ever thought to do was shoot a vlog.
Marco:
I can't even imagine... To me, that just shows a severe lapse in judgment.
Marco:
And not of the woman who was vlogging.
Marco:
I mean, she wasn't the employee.
Marco:
Her father, who was permitting her to do this and bringing her into campus knowing she was doing this...
Marco:
that you know he's the one who has the who has the poor judgment here i whether it's against the rules as they're written or not i don't know i don't know what the rules are i i would never assume that would be okay and i and i don't think anybody should be surprised um that he lost his job as a result um you know to let somebody in and you know you said that it you know maybe it wouldn't matter if the phone was off no i'll go even further um
Marco:
The phone was not out yet, and the press embargo wasn't even lifted.
Marco:
Reviews hadn't even been permitted yet.
Marco:
To bring someone into campus as an employee and to permit them to shoot video of your running phone, of this non-publicly available phone, I think that's common sense that that would be a problem.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
And that's not even considering that it was allegedly running internal software, which is another problem.
Marco:
But even if it wasn't running internal software, I think allowing someone to shoot a video, first of all, to shoot a video inside campus at all and publish it.
Marco:
I had lunch at Cafe Max.
Marco:
It was amazing.
Marco:
The last thing I would have thought to do was shoot a video and post it.
Marco:
Yeah, like even though we weren't as far as I know we weren't seeing anything secret, you know, but like still it's like this is like the interior of the campus like it felt incredibly privileged to be there at all and I didn't want to get myself or our hosts in trouble.
Marco:
So the last thing I would have thought to do would be to shoot any kind of video or take pictures of people in the cafe or anything like that.
Marco:
I, too, took a picture of the quote on the wall in that one room.
Marco:
And because it was a press area, I decided this is probably safe to post to Instagram.
Marco:
And I did.
Marco:
But that was the only thing that I took a picture of.
Marco:
That's the only memory that I have a record of that trip because I was too afraid to take my phone out for any other reason.
Marco:
And again, I didn't want to get anybody in trouble.
Marco:
And I assumed that it would...
Marco:
get people in trouble if if any of us took photos and posted them online so the yeah so it this should have been common sense and i think to most apple employees it is common sense and so if somebody didn't see that as common sense or had a bad lapse in judgment and lost their job as a result i honestly don't think that's that much of a story
John:
I don't think these people need to use common sense because every employee gets training with regard to secrets and stuff.
John:
It's not like Apple just allows this to happen through osmosis and culture.
John:
You get told when you're hired by Apple, here's what you can and can't do and all sorts of guidelines and how to be safe and blah, blah, blah.
John:
And this is clearly a thing that you're not supposed to do.
John:
And this person did it.
John:
And sometimes they're like, well, is it a zero-tolerance policy?
John:
One strike and you're out?
John:
Like...
John:
that isn't there you know okay you made a mistake but you maybe you're a new employee and don't know no i'm not sure what their policy with that is but in this particular situation whether it was the first time or not it was not the type of thing where it's like all right well you took someone on a tour and you let them take a picture but then you uh you know have them deleted off their phone or you let them take a picture but then it never left their phone again
John:
Like, there was a violation of the rules, and technically we could fire you according to, you know, whatever thing you signed in your employment agreement or whatever, but we won't because the consequences weren't that bad.
John:
But in this case, the consequences were about as bad as they could possibly be, and that the entire world saw this video before they were supposed to see it, revealing essentially that, yes, you broke the rules, and now everybody knows you broke the rules.
John:
And if Apple was to allow this to happen, they're basically saying...
John:
our pr doesn't need to actually control the message for new product introductions actually random employees in our cafeteria can also decide when the public gets to see the phone and in what context because that doesn't undermine our corporate goals at all this gigantic uh corporate like it was a mistake and it was a fireable offense and it didn't go well like it went pretty poorly when it's on youtube and spread all over the internet so
John:
it's a sad story i feel bad for everybody involved right uh but it's not a surprising story and i don't think apple was being excessively mean here because like i said i think the consequences were actually pretty bad may not seem that bad but you're like well everyone knew about the phone whatever but but as we'll discuss in a moment uh for probably the one and only topic of the show
John:
Apple has a PR department whose job it is to control how the world comes to know their products when they're introduced.
John:
And no part of the PR plan involves random employees in the cafeteria posting vlogs about it.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Betterment, rethink what your money can do.
Casey:
This has been an interesting week in Apple PR.
Casey:
And all of the talking heads like us, I think, have been in various degrees confused, happy, upset, and enthusiastic, and bitter at some point or another.
Casey:
So help me get the timeline right.
Casey:
So was it Monday that Stephen Levy's review came out?
Casey:
Is that right?
Yeah.
Marco:
I believe so.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Yeah, I might have the details slightly wrong on this, but I think that's right.
Casey:
So Stephen Levy was one of the very small handful of people that reviewed the original iPhone way back when.
Casey:
And he was apparently given some sort of blessing to be the first person to get a review posted of the iPhone X.
Casey:
Then I believe Tuesday, or maybe it was late Monday, sometime shortly thereafter, it ended up that we saw that a bunch of YouTubers had, if I understand things right, been offered to come, it seemed in New York, offered to come into like an Apple kind of press event where they could film...
Casey:
and use the iPhone X, and they could film the iPhone X, and do a couple minutes with it, and they could post their reviews to YouTube late Monday or early Tuesday.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
My reaction to that was kind of like, what the hell?
Casey:
Because in and of itself, YouTubers getting access wasn't remarkable.
Casey:
Like, okay, fine.
Casey:
Of course, MKBHD had access.
Casey:
But it wasn't MKBHD.
Casey:
It was...
Casey:
People that I'd never heard of, which, to be honest, is actually probably a good sign because I don't know who any of the popular YouTubers are.
Casey:
But it was surprising to me because I'm at least casually aware of most of the popular tech-related or tech-adjacent YouTubers, like MPBHD, like Casey Neistat, and people like that.
Casey:
And these people that had access seemed to have...
Casey:
uh a far numerically anyway a far smaller following than than the heavy hitters like like the nice stats and the mkbhts and that was kind of weird and naturally i was a little maybe offended that's probably too strong word but i was a little like man why didn't i get a chance at this like is podcasting not a thing does that not count i gave up on that long ago
Casey:
Oh, I know, I know.
Casey:
And it's a selfish reaction, full on.
Casey:
But it's, you know, it was my honest reaction.
Casey:
And I was kind of, I wasn't upset about it, but I was kind of like, what the hell?
Casey:
And Matt Alexander put up a really, really great post about kind of what do you think about when you're a product company and releasing a new product and how do you control the PR?
Casey:
And I am unfairly summarizing it briefly.
Casey:
by saying the takeaway I had from it was that these YouTubers that I kind of fluffed off as, oh, who are they?
Casey:
They're not important.
Casey:
They're actually quite important just to circles that I don't pay attention to.
Casey:
And I'm embarrassed to say that didn't occur to me until I really talked to Joe and Matt about it, but it seems obvious in retrospect.
Casey:
And that's probably really smart on Apple's part because the reality of the situation is...
Casey:
I'm unlikely to wait very long to buy an iPhone 10.
Casey:
And most of the listeners of this show, given infinite money, would probably buy an iPhone 10 tomorrow if they haven't already.
Casey:
So does Apple really need to convince us to buy an iPhone 10?
Casey:
No, not really.
Casey:
But what about the people that care about fashion or care about things that are not just technology?
Yeah.
Casey:
And so the reactions to this were varied, some very angry, some confused, some a combination of both.
Casey:
And then shortly thereafter, I think it was Tuesday morning that a lot of the traditional reviewers, like the Grubers of the world, the Jason Snells, et cetera, when their embargo was lifted, and then we got some of the stuff that we expect as Apple nerds.
Casey:
But it's been an interesting few days watching Apple try to pull the strings on this puppet and figure out the best way to get this PR wave orchestrated.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I've been talking for a while.
Casey:
Thoughts?
Marco:
I don't have a lot of thoughts on this.
Marco:
It just seemed weird.
Marco:
It seemed like a weird approach.
Marco:
And it's really hard to talk about this without somebody saying, oh, well, we're just old and out of touch because everyone gets everything from YouTube now.
Marco:
And I'm not even arguing that people on YouTube shouldn't get...
Marco:
pre-release review unit access.
Marco:
No, I think they actually should.
Marco:
I think Apple should go to where the people are.
Marco:
That makes total sense.
Marco:
And YouTube is where many of the people are now.
Marco:
So that makes total sense.
Marco:
The thing about it that seemed weird to me is that compared to all past launches like this,
Marco:
It wasn't weird that they added these YouTube channels that honestly many of them were not very popular, as you said.
Marco:
It wasn't like MKBHD was there at that event earlier than everyone else.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
But what seemed weird about it was not the addition of the people who got it, but the subtraction of the people who didn't.
Marco:
Again, it's not weird that YouTubers got access.
Marco:
It's weird that none of the press did, basically.
Marco:
And the press that usually does.
Marco:
As somebody who follows this stuff, and I always want to read those first reviews, maybe that makes me a dinosaur.
Marco:
But for the most part, almost none of the press that usually gets review units got one at all or with more than like 12 hours before the publishing deadline.
Marco:
So it was weird as a fan.
Marco:
Most of what we have to go on is very surface level.
Marco:
And that to me is deeply unsatisfying.
Marco:
I wanted the in-depth reviews from Gruber and from the other tech publications that usually get them.
Marco:
And to not have that felt weird.
Marco:
And I don't think it's a good... I don't think it projects confidence from Apple.
Marco:
To give so many of these reviewers less than a day to review their phones...
Marco:
suggests that Apple doesn't want them to spend that much time before they publish their thoughts.
Marco:
And I don't think that's... Even if the iPhone X is great, and by the early reports, it seems like it probably is, that doesn't look good.
Marco:
That doesn't exude confidence in their product to say, we're not even going to give you enough time to judge things like battery life or Face ID reliability.
Marco:
That doesn't look good for the product.
Marco:
So it's just weird.
Marco:
So in an ideal world, and I've seen people suggest too, well, they didn't have enough to go around.
Marco:
That's completely wrong.
Marco:
They have plenty.
Marco:
If you can still log on right now and order one that comes in December, they have plenty.
Marco:
Apple could have given phones to more reviewers with more time if they wanted to.
Marco:
This was clearly a choice not to do that.
Marco:
And I just think...
Marco:
That part is what feels off about this.
Marco:
We don't have those in-depth reviews from tech writers, big publications, hardly any of them.
Marco:
We have basically three.
Marco:
It's weird to have so few.
Marco:
For such an important product coming out of Apple, I want more.
John:
So, I think it's easy, especially if you've been following Apple for a long time, to start getting into a tail wagging the dog situation where you really start to believe that...
John:
The publications and people who get early access to Apple stuff and write the reviews that we like to read are getting it because of...
John:
some kind of merit that they have, like for the original iPhone is a good example.
John:
Like the original iPhone went to, uh, Pogue, Mossberg, Ed Begg, uh, and Levy, I think, like get them all there.
John:
Right.
John:
But that's, all right.
John:
So that's, that's who it went to.
John:
But the reason, uh, we were all comfortable with that worldview is because it went to wall street journal, New York times, USA today.
John:
And what was Steven Levy working for that?
John:
I forget maybe time.
John:
Um, but anyway, um,
John:
Famous old people who've been doing this for a long time, working for famous, powerful, influential old institutions.
John:
And so it fit with the mental model of if you're the New York Times, you get the iPhone early.
John:
If you're the Wall Street Journal, you get the iPhone only.
John:
And even if you're USA Today, which may be McPaper, right?
John:
But it's extremely popular, right?
John:
Of course, USA Today gets one even when we say, oh, USA Today, what is that review?
John:
You're going to be like, haha, USA Today, right?
John:
But they're really big.
John:
And so that all fits with our model of like the tail being the publications wagging the dog that is Apple.
John:
It's like Apple has no choice.
John:
They have to give it to the Wall Street Journal.
John:
Apple has no choice.
John:
They have to give it to the New York Times.
John:
The New York Times is just too important.
John:
Right.
John:
But that's never been the situation.
John:
The tail is not wagging the dog.
John:
Apple.
John:
has a PR department whose job it is to choose how best to promote their products to the public.
John:
It just so happens that the strategy chosen by that PR department has fit with the narrative that the people who get early access get it based on prestige, longtime relationships with Steve Jobs, longtime in the industry, like whatever criteria that we had come to accept as like that's the reason they're getting it.
John:
When...
John:
And that should never have been the reason they were getting it.
John:
Strictly speaking, it should have been that like it's a second degree thing where Apple's like the best way to promote our product is to have the most prestigious newspapers promoted.
John:
Let's go find the most prestigious newspapers.
John:
So it's a second degree.
John:
It's not as if like, well, we have no choice but to give it to the most prestigious newspapers.
John:
If we don't do that, we'll be hurt.
John:
it's it's a selection of of a strategy and an execution of that strategy in recent years apple has been changing its strategy a lot more from year to year in terms of how it does everything like the mac roundtable showing like yosemite early in in private press briefings distributed around the country uh
John:
the incorporation of youtubers starting several years ago like from year to year it's clear that apple pr is trying different strategies and depending on what strategy they're executing from that follows who who gets this
John:
and there is no like bubble of course they have to go to the new york times no they don't they didn't they didn't do it this time they don't have to get the wall street journal like you know there's there's no reason that the wall street journal has to have the best and most and earliest access as compared to a youtuber with not a very big following like there's that's not a rule it's just what apple chooses to do
John:
now i'm not in pr i don't know what the best strategy for apple is um but this strategy this time around was different in a way that seemed to break people's mental model of how pr works and they were forced to realize that who gets what when is entirely the choice of apple on how that you know how they think they can best promote their product now you may say that they're wrong maybe you're suddenly a pr expert you're like apple you made a mistake you should have given this to these people and that people in these times or whatever
John:
um but most people on the outside aren't thinking of it that way they're not thinking how how does this does this put the apple's best foot forward right we're thinking of it as consumers and i you know i am as well like you just want to read your you just want your stories i want my stories i want to read the reviews from the people that i know and if suddenly you can't read those reviews you're like oh that's sad for me right but it's not about whether you get to read the reviews from the people you want
John:
apple doesn't care whether you get to reusing the people you want unless that influences the success of their product and how it's received by the public which maybe it is and maybe that's the argument like oh because you didn't give it to walt mossborough he's retired now but because you didn't give to the new york times as early as possible now i you know that's going to influence me to not buy the phone or whatever like that's you know that's that's not an argument so mostly i think it's
John:
people had the wrong model of how PR works and that wrong model was brought into stark relief and then a little tiny bit is you move my cheese I'm used to always reading these reviews from these people and expecting them to have a week with the phone beforehand because it's always been the case right
John:
And then finally, the ugliest part of it is, you know, just general bitterness that somebody got the phone and somebody didn't.
John:
Right.
John:
Now, it's easy for us to say here on podcast where we never get anything.
John:
Right.
John:
So we didn't lose anything.
John:
We're always at the bottom of the barrel.
John:
Right.
John:
Although I still there's still room for us to be bitter, too, because, of course, selfishly, as Casey pointed out from my perspective.
John:
I love that, you know, that more different people get the iPhone.
John:
I'm a more different person too.
John:
Like we have a dinky podcast anyway.
John:
Yeah.
John:
So from an outsider's perspective, not thinking of it as PR, I wish everybody got all the iPhones they wanted.
John:
If you're doing any kind of stuff on YouTube, on podcasts, if you're writing a blog, if you're doing anything and you're doing it day after day, year after year, week after week,
John:
and you're doing a good job, and you have any kind of audience, I think it should be possible to get review hardware for a phone after it's announced but before the public can get it.
John:
But that's just like, oh, what do you want?
John:
We're the tail here.
John:
We're not the dog.
John:
a question apple has to ask is not does this person deserve it or do we feel like we have to give it because they have a big audience the question is what is the best strategy for selling a lot of phones and making people happy for them and this year they tried this strategy which was this weird mix of low volume youtubers plus traditional media with with a lead time plus some uh traditional media with less lead time and they'll see what the result is and i bet they'll change it next year um but
John:
people getting angry about it like it's it's a human reaction to you know you know they move my cheese like i want i want to read the the walt mossberg review but he retired and now i'm angry well that's life like whatever you know like i i i wish uh you know gruber had had the phone for two weeks and and he didn't well that's life right but
John:
um you know i don't think the whole class struggle thing of like old world tech old white dudes who always get the reviews versus new people i don't think that's actually the story other than like chiding people for being uh you know for being to to sort of up their own butts about it like once you start really believing that like my favorite person deserves to get the phone you have totally lost the plot about what what is going on here um
John:
And some of us are just disappointed that we don't get to read the reviews from the people that we wanted to read it from at the scale we wanted to read it.
John:
But that's just us.
John:
Perhaps this is the most brilliant PR strategy ever for a phone with Apple choosing to do what it did.
John:
we won't know until maybe we'll never know because we won't know like what the results are of this as compared to press past strategies but at the very least as a less interested outside observer because honestly um you know i do want to read the reviews from basically from people i know personally like jason snell's review right but that's that's a position that most people do not find themselves in um but none of them are going to influence my my buying decision like
John:
what's going to be influenced by buying decision is when you two get them and when i get them and we try them we talk to each other like like anyone else um but beyond that like i i'm excited by new people getting the phones and i'm trying to think with pr mindset why would it be a good idea to give low volume youtube channels uh early access to the phone and i can think of a ton of reasons not again not being anyone who knows anything about pr but just like
John:
thinking about it for a few seconds first of all those people are going to be so grateful like just like we would be grateful apple so those people are going to be so grateful to get early access to the iphone 10 like because they know they're not you know some big channel that has millions and millions subscribers they know how big they are compared to the youtube world they are going to be so grateful to get that
John:
they're all enthusiastic these people love the the iphone they love apple like it is you can't you know you can't buy that enthusiasm these people are not jaded cynical i've reviewed every single thing and you know i just expect to get it and i'm angry if i don't they are excited to be there and they're gonna do things and review things in a way that is different than people who reviewed 100 different things like
John:
I see lots of potential interesting upsides to doing what they did.
John:
We already talked about the downsides.
John:
Maybe it makes you look like you're scared that you don't want to give the jaded reviewer access to your phone because they're just going to tear it apart because they're going to find all the problems that the person who gets to play with it for 10 minutes in an Apple thing before release isn't going to find, right?
John:
That all factors into the decisions, but...
John:
um i'm definitely not angry that more people got access to it i'm not even really angry that my favorites didn't get access to it earlier although it seems like a lot of them are angry which i you know whatever if it's your livelihood i kind of don't blame them but that's always the way it's been with apple like for for to give an example from my past for years and years and years ours technically didn't get crap from apple
John:
the earth technically could not get like they would not that they wouldn't return our calls but basically like they would be nice and polite but we could not get anything from apple and eventually that changed
John:
And it changed because Apple's PR strategy changed.
John:
It's not like we weren't worthy before and were worthy after.
John:
And it didn't feel good when we couldn't get anything, right?
John:
And it felt good when we could get something.
John:
But the connection between the quality of Ars Technica and whether or not Apple gave us review hardware...
John:
was not the connection people want to think it is it is apple decides what to do and you honestly really have no this is important life lesson you can't control what other people do or think about you the best you can do is just decide how you're going to act and do your best work and hope for the best so that's why we continue to do this podcast patiently waiting apple for apple to send us preview mac pro hardware please call us how funny would it be if i was the one that got the mac pro
John:
not that funny not as funny as you think it is oh it's i would find it very funny but seriously who else are they going to send i guess they could send preview mac pro hardware to like like actual professionals who like doing video and stuff but that's boring what other what other uh cultural institution cares more about the mac pro than this podcast two thirds of this podcast two out of three hosts in this podcast recommend the mac pro that is not yet released
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
You know, I should also note that his name Juan Bagnell, I didn't get a chance to look it up, and I think one of you added it to the show notes, but he had a relatively long kind of rant, although it was very level-headed to be called a rant, but a discussion, I guess, about how one of the advantages of giving some of these YouTubers access is that they're not all old white guys like we are, and
Casey:
There's a lot to be said for that.
Casey:
And I think, John, you touched on this a minute ago, but that's an improvement.
Casey:
No matter how you slice it, that's an improvement to the PR strategy.
Casey:
Now, does it have to be at the cost of old white dudes?
Casey:
Maybe, maybe not.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
But certainly reaching more diverse voices is a good thing for Apple.
Casey:
So you should check that out if you have about, I think it was a little less than 10 minutes to spare.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And like so many things in this world, the older... The farther you go back in time, the more likely it is that all the people in positions of power are old white dudes, right?
John:
And so any PR strategy that focuses...
John:
on old white dudes is necessarily back in time like we hope that we're making progress on all fronts and that there is a more diverse set of voices out there especially with the donning the internet and the bit lowering the barriers to entry and if if you if they were if apple was still pursuing the same strategy they did in 2007 with the iphone and only giving it to old white dudes who work for newspapers like we would all agree that's that's an outdated strategy right
John:
If they simply shift and say, we should give it to new media, as they did, as they started giving it to websites like Ars Technica and stuff like that.
John:
New media, you would hope, has better ratios of, you know, men and women and different races.
John:
Like, you would hope that purely by moving to new media, you get more diversity.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And that's before you even consider, should we actually target diverse reviewers?
John:
Because we're leaving money on the table if we don't do that, right?
John:
And so it's not even clear to me that there was a specific effort to target more diverse reviewers in this point.
John:
I think it's a natural consequence of targeting modern media.
John:
And again, it's not the first time they've done anything with YouTube.
John:
We were commenting about the fact that they're not giving it to the most popular YouTube channels or whatever.
John:
But that is the promise and the beauty of the internet and YouTube and blogs and every other sort of...
John:
form of uh of media without as many uh people preventing you from doing it anyone can put up a blog anyone can put up something on youtube uh and that is allowing us to hear from people we previously didn't hear where they were there we just didn't hear from them because they weren't hired by the new york times right so that is all positive and a conscious shift towards modern media uh you know like podcasts which are super modern but also still dominated by white dudes sorry um
John:
yeah like i think that that is all positive and if anything apple should lean even more heavily in that direction because all those voices are still underrepresented in uh modern media as well it's just like i said the the older the people get and the farther you go back in time the worse it gets in terms of diversity even if you're not doing anything different even if you're not like consciously trying to just give it to white dudes if you want to give it to old people who work in newspapers that's what you're going to end up with much more so than if you want to give it to popular youtubers
Casey:
So now that we've discussed the completely insular brouhaha, what do we think of these reviews?
Casey:
It sounds like this is a pretty solid phone.
John:
I haven't had time to review so many of them.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
No, I mean, again, my one hesitation basically is like...
Marco:
Almost nobody has had a chance to really live with it for more than a couple days.
Marco:
So the initial impressions are great.
Marco:
So I think I'm confident enough with all these reviews that my first day with the phone is probably going to be awesome.
Marco:
I just don't know what's going to happen after that.
Marco:
But it does seem pretty positive.
Marco:
If nothing else, it was frustrating to see all that PR stuff because...
Marco:
Almost every one of the YouTube quick takes and even many of the press quick takes were just kind of restating Apple's own PR points about like, look, Animoji exists and it's new and shiny.
Marco:
It's coming out soon.
Marco:
And there wasn't much that we didn't already know.
Marco:
whenever we learn details of new things about it that i didn't already know like and that's one of the reasons why i like jason snell's review so much and one other and why i like the upgraded podcast this week so much because it's packed full of like actually new information that we didn't already know as enthusiasts who follow this stuff and who already saw the keynote you know like we like so many of the articles and reviews and youtube things are just like
Marco:
rehashes of the keynote event, basically.
Marco:
And so to hear anything new is great.
Marco:
And as we've heard new things from the very few sources that have new things to report so far, it just sounds really great.
Marco:
It sounds awesome.
Marco:
And I am very much looking forward to it.
Marco:
I can't wait until Friday at 9pm when the overworked UPS server finally gets here.
Marco:
I cannot wait for that because I'm really looking forward to it.
Marco:
It sounds like what I have
Marco:
ever since the iPhone Plus came out three years ago?
Marco:
When was that?
Marco:
Three years ago?
Marco:
Ever since then, it's what I've wanted, which is I would like the benefits of that in a smaller body that I can actually hold more easily than the big one.
Marco:
And so this seems to offer...
Marco:
basically that like there's a few things that are different like you know the screen is like taller and skinnier uh you know it's not it isn't like the same aspect ratio and width as the plus phone but it seems like we have the best of everything in this phone finally and that's that's going to be really great
Marco:
I am a little concerned about reachability of the vertical reachability.
Marco:
But I'm kind of looking forward to it as an app developer.
Marco:
You know, I finally I shipped overcast for it should be out by the time the show is edited if everything goes well.
Marco:
Now I have a giant canvas to play with.
Marco:
And now I have a whole UI to rethink.
Marco:
I haven't really done much of that yet.
Marco:
I basically just expanded the existing UI to fill the screen properly because I didn't want to do any redesign work without actually having it in my hand physically to test with and to see, like, how does this actually feel?
Marco:
What can I actually reach?
Marco:
You know, things like that.
Marco:
But I'm looking forward to this new era of
Marco:
kind of having to rethink everything it's a ton of work for developers as I mentioned last week but I think it's going to be really nice when we get there and I'm really looking forward to having all this real estate on the screen to play with you know my now playing screen can have so many more features now that I have like a tall skinny aspect ratio so like I
Marco:
I'm looking forward to it both as a developer and as a user and as a fan of this stuff.
Marco:
And I'm happy to see so far that the reviews, shallow as many of them are, are seemingly universally positive.
Marco:
And it seems like everyone loves Face ID.
Marco:
It seems like it's really fast.
Marco:
It seems like it's not perfect, but it's close enough and people don't seem to notice it much anymore, which is awesome.
Marco:
Overall, I'm very excited.
Marco:
I'm very happy and thankful I got a day one order in and I just can't wait to get it.
Marco:
Yep.
John:
Yeah, I'm mostly relieved that FaceTime works as we always hoped it would.
John:
Sorry.
John:
Yes, Face ID.
John:
Because that was my big fear, that Face ID would be good, but just barely under the threshold of annoyance.
John:
And every review I've read so far has said...
John:
it's fine like it does it works like apple says it's supposed to within the parameters that they set out there are no surprises and it feels good to use it's different but as someone who spent a long time with touch id phones you know we all know and have internalized the vagaries of touch id no wet fingers sometimes doesn't get it on the first try and you got to pick up your finger and put it down again every once in a while you get the code thrown in your face uh
John:
And we just accept that as the price of living with touch ID.
John:
Face ID has all the equivalents of that.
John:
It's too far away from me.
John:
There's bright sun.
John:
Uh, you know, my identical twin can unlock my phone, all sorts of things like, yes, every one of these things has inherent problems, but, uh, the videos I've seen about how long it takes to unlock, like people going down and doing a timing and a stopwatch and everything that shows me so far, not having used one of these myself, that it seems like it's, it's under the threshold, like that it's acceptable.
John:
Right.
John:
Uh,
John:
uh and like touch id was in the first iteration touch it in the first iteration was also like you know it was obviously a vast improvement over typing in code but it got better in the second so i'm already looking forward to the second one but the first one like there's no catastrophic problem like oh my goodness this phone hinges on face id and face id is just too annoying to use that does not appear to be the case so i'm relieved in that case um and
John:
There are a few reviews I've read in full, like Jason's and I've read some of Panzerino's.
John:
Their take on the phone obviously speaks to me the most because they come from the same experiences that I do.
John:
But getting back to the PR thing briefly, all those reviews that are like, oh, this is a shallow review and it doesn't tell me anything that I didn't already know.
John:
The people who watch that video don't know all the things that we already know because they didn't pour over the keynote and do a three-hour podcast about it.
John:
That's all new information to the people who watch that channel.
John:
People who watch that channel have seen like an advertisement and some images on articles they didn't read and everything they're being told, they're learning it for the first time from a trusted face that they know, right?
John:
So again, if I had to put myself my PR hat on and think like, how do you imagine PR might work?
John:
uh reaching people who aren't you know uh pouring over everything that that comes from apple those reviews aren't shallow to them that is a giant info dump as far as they're concerned yeah we're hearing things that were like yeah yeah i knew that knew that knew that knew that but the people who are watching those videos on those channels that are not tech related didn't know any of that stuff and they're seeing the new iphone for the very first time maybe they don't even understand what a big deal it is like whatever the new iphone is it out yet can you buy it do all my friends already have it they don't know
John:
uh those are channels that were probably being underserved by just giving it to the tech columnists and the wall street journal and a bunch of apple blogger nerds so again i can imagine all sorts of potential upsides to the strategy that apple took even even something like mkbhd has a nerd audience like that's a nerdy channel right it's not the same as giving it to someone who works for a fashion magazine it's a different audience and apple's reaching different people with this strategy now who was that i think it was uh
John:
was it marco or casey which one of you brought up the subtracting people me that's the that part of the strategy of not giving it to the other institutions i have more trouble thinking up a reason for that other than they were afraid that the cranky
John:
uh sort of uh you know the old guard would be more likely to spend time focusing on the flaws and less time being excited about the cool stuff but that's just that's just a theory like and again i think apple pr tries things and looks at the results and adjust their strategy and they've done it so many times that i give them leeway to try this strategy and we'll see what they do with the next one
Marco:
All right, thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Betterment, 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:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause it was accidental.
Marco:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter.
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S So that's Casey Liss M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T Marco Arman S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse It's accidental They didn't mean to Accidental Tech Podcast So long
John:
i have some after show things to ask casey about so i am super behind on twitter casey have you already posted your uh video review of the alpha no good god no yeah we we marco and i spoke about this a little bit in the pre-show and and i have purchased final cut pro final cut pro x whatever it is this free car is already costing you money
Casey:
Oh, is it ever?
Casey:
I did post a like literally eight second teaser to Twitter earlier today.
Casey:
I stopped that teaser deliberately right before I got to Quadrifoglio because I didn't want to have the entire internet make fun of me for pronouncing that incorrectly.
Casey:
So I am pleased with the progress I'm making on the video, but I have made very little progress and it is slow going.
Casey:
But that progress that has been made, I'm pleased with.
John:
So I am actually, I did actually see that clip.
John:
So that's how far behind I am Twitter.
John:
I think I just read that before we sat down podcasting and I have one piece of advice.
John:
I watched it with mute on, so I didn't hear any of the audio, but what I did see is one of the default fonts for titles.
Casey:
Everyone got so cranky about that.
John:
Do not use that font.
Casey:
Everyone got so cranky about that.
Casey:
I don't think it was the default.
Casey:
Now, I'm not arguing it was one of a short list of options.
Casey:
Completely correct.
Casey:
But it was not the default, I don't believe.
Casey:
And I have since changed it to Futura because I haven't come up with a better plan yet.
John:
If you hadn't changed it, I would have said, let me put it this way.
John:
That's the font I use on my Destiny videos.
John:
You should be aiming higher than that.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Marco:
Well, Casey, you know, if you have a bunch of people complaining that your font isn't good enough, you only have two options.
Marco:
Comic Sans and Papyrus.
John:
well no avatar to use of pirates you don't want to be confused with avatar uh yeah yeah i mean uh so far so good uh i can certainly send the two of you guys a draft if you give a crap so for the for the first two seconds i saw of it also again with mute on or whatever seven seconds or whatever it was
John:
Don't take this the wrong way, but it's hard for me to tell whether you are doing an homage to the car review channels that you watch and love or a parody of them.
John:
I don't feel like you should feel constrained by the formats that have come before.
John:
Yes, we've all seen these other car channels, but...
John:
uh i don't think you need to do a car review the way you do them you can do them the casey way now maybe it starts by saying i'm going to imitate the channels that i know and love or like maybe you are sending them up or maybe half of it is the joke that you are exactly following the format of the channels that you like but it's funny because it's you doing it right and
John:
I don't know.
John:
I have been sound was off, but I would encourage you to spread your wings and fly and do whatever the hell kind of carve you.
Casey:
You want to do your assessment is semi correct.
Casey:
So I need to pull from somewhere, right?
Casey:
Like I'm not a creative enough person that I can just fart out like this brand new paradigm.
John:
Yes, you are.
John:
You're an excellent farter, Casey.
Casey:
I am a very good farter.
John:
You're full of gas.
John:
Everybody loves it.
Marco:
Wait, is that a marketable skill?
Marco:
We wish.
Casey:
Because if so... Yeah, the three of us, we've got that on lock.
Casey:
No, I need somewhere to start from, and my starting point, and certainly the first seven seconds completely bears this out, and you are right, but my starting point is...
Casey:
kind of mostly doug de muro style review but the formula is not identical like it's not a bunch of quirks then you know in car video then doug score like it's not going to be quite that formulaic but i do start with some of me talking around the outside of the car than me talking and well and that's about all i've got so far
Casey:
That the intention is of me talking about the inside of the car, but very little in the realm of quirks and more about just what does it feel like to drive a Julia.
Casey:
And then a little bit of ride-along footage, which I actually think will probably be pretty brief because all it's going to be is me giggling about how fast it is and how good it sounds.
Casey:
And then a little bit at the end, which is, again, me standing in front of the car outside.
Casey:
And I have a couple of...
Casey:
I feel like if it goes the way I intend, it's going to be part Doug DeMuro, part CGP Grey in that I have some... It's going to be stick figures at some point.
Casey:
No, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
Well, not really.
Casey:
That would be awesome.
Casey:
So that I don't know if you saw it, John.
Casey:
This might have been before you before you jumped on the call.
Casey:
But I'd put in the chat a link to a still picture that I had taken, which is of the three key fobs.
Casey:
And so, yeah, this is when you were here because you were talking about the accord key fob.
Casey:
And the shtick with that is that is like the final frame in me building up to what you see.
Casey:
So as the voiceover is going, I have just a white sheet of paper.
Casey:
And then you see the BMW E90 key appear.
Casey:
And then the next quote unquote frame, which is probably 30 literal frames later, you see the E90 having been written.
Casey:
And then you see the F30 key appear 30 frames later, the F30 key that's been written.
Casey:
You see what I'm saying?
Casey:
And so there's some gags, not gags, that's too strong a word, but like some cutesy timing that I'm trying to do for a couple of these things.
Marco:
Is that on top of a toilet tank?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
Also, screw you.
Casey:
That's my trunk, you bastard.
John:
That's a white car.
John:
It's hard to tell.
John:
Oh.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
You two are the worst.
Casey:
That's funny, but you two are the worst.
John:
It looks like a toilet tank.
John:
God bless America.
John:
That just shows how clean he keeps his car.
John:
It's so polished.
John:
You thought it was a toilet.
Oh.
Casey:
Anyway, but the reason I say it's vaguely CGP grayish is that I think one of the ten, ten it isn't the word I'm looking for, but one of the like schticks with the CGP gray video is being cutesy with the timing.
Casey:
And I mean that in a complimentary way, you know, like things are happening visually on beats, verbal beats.
Casey:
And so there's like a little bit of that going on.
Casey:
And I plan to do a little bit of that with regard to the interior as well.
Casey:
um i hope i can trim it down like it's a couple of minutes long how long is this it's three minutes right now and it has probably a third of the footage i want maybe even a little less than that and i'm aiming for between five and ten minutes i think the 20 minute demuro doug demuro reviews that's way too much for me today if i get in the habit of doing this maybe i'll get in the habit of doing you know 20 minute reviews one day eventually but
Casey:
For my first crack at this, I really hope to stay under 10 and would prefer to be closer to five, but I think it'll be 10 or maybe even more than that.
John:
Just don't spend a lot of time on the owner's manual on the spare tire and you'll be fine.
John:
Sorry, Doug.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Noted.
Casey:
I deeply regret not having bought or rented or done something to get a lav mic because
Casey:
I think the audio quality is I'm going to get dinged for pretty bad to the point that I am debating actually trying to dub.
Casey:
ADR.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I feel like bad audio on your first YouTube video featuring yourself is a rite of passage for everybody who's not Marco.
Casey:
Yeah, that's probably true, actually.
John:
Even I only had mediocre audio.
John:
No, but you were way above the normal bar, which is like it sounds like you're talking to a laptop microphone from across the room.
John:
Everybody's first YouTube video has to be like that.
John:
I think it's the rule.
John:
Yeah, I mean, I was wearing a lav mic, just a crappy one.
John:
So I had crappy lav audio.
John:
You still sounded way, way better than what people's first YouTube video is supposed to sound like.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
No, I mean, I would say, Casey, like, it's better to... And I'm saying this to myself as much as you, because when I tried to do a nice-looking YouTube video with my MacBook Pro review, like...
Marco:
I looked back on it recently and it's like, I can't even watch it.
Marco:
It's so bad.
Marco:
At the time, I didn't think it was that bad.
Marco:
Looking back on it now, I think it's really bad.
Marco:
It's painful for me to even see it.
Marco:
One of the lessons I learned from that that I wish I would have learned before I made it is it's better to do a better job at a format you can do better
Marco:
than to aim too high with the format or style that you want to create and do a bad job of it.
Marco:
And that's what I did.
Marco:
I aimed too high, and I tried to create a much higher production value video than what my skill and experience and, to some degree, equipment was actually capable of.
Marco:
But this is mostly not an equipment problem.
Marco:
This is mostly a skill and experience problem.
Marco:
And the fact is, like...
Marco:
We've made so few videos.
Marco:
I don't know if you have a better knack at it than I do.
Marco:
It's hard to have a worse knack at it than I do.
Marco:
If I make any more videos, I'm going to try to make them in a more casual way with lower production value intentionally to prevent me from getting too much in the weeds here.
Marco:
Because like...
Marco:
You might be thinking about fixing your audio.
Marco:
That's cool.
Marco:
You should have good audio if you can, but that's probably not going to be your biggest challenge.
Marco:
Your biggest challenge is going to be things that people who make video more and who are experienced and or trained with it are better.
Marco:
So things like composition, timing, cutting motion, color correction, stuff that casual beginners just don't get or need experience to develop to get.
Marco:
And because we've made so few videos, we don't have that yet.
Marco:
So it's better, I think, to aim for something more casual, less produced, less fancy, and just put that out there than to try to make something super professional when you don't have the tool set or the skill set or the experience to be able to achieve the look you're going for yet.
Casey:
Yeah, I think that makes sense.
Casey:
And I think I feel like my aspiration is to have something that feels like or even feels vaguely like a cross of DeMuro and Gray.
Casey:
Not to say that that's my marching orders, but that somebody could watch this film or whatever you want to call it, this video and say, yeah, I see what he was going for there.
Casey:
And I can see a little sprinkle of DeMuro and a little sprinkle of gray there.
Casey:
And okay, he didn't get there, but I see where this line is heading.
Casey:
Well, you can't really have a line if it's only one data point, but you know what I'm saying?
Casey:
Like, I understand where he's going with this.
Casey:
And yeah, that was a bit ham-fisted here.
Casey:
The audio is crappy there, but there's promise here.
Casey:
Does that make sense?
Casey:
Like, I want to, I feel like it is within my skill set to...
Casey:
I do feel like the things I'm asking of myself, I'm reaching to get to them, but I think they're...
Casey:
by and large attainable which is kind of which is the best place to be right where you're uncomfortable but not and so that's that's where i think i am remind me of this when the video is released inside our garbage well and the thing is too like you know you're comparing yourself to people who are such pros yeah well doug de miro come on de miro is good
Marco:
I'll give you a quick story here.
Marco:
Gray is going to be so embarrassed that I'm saying this, but oh well.
Marco:
Sorry, Gray.
Marco:
I don't want to give any details, really, in case it embarrasses anybody.
Marco:
At some point, I witnessed somebody asking Gray for a critique on a video.
Marco:
He went on his phone for a few minutes and the conversation went elsewhere.
Marco:
About 15 minutes later, he showed on his phone
Marco:
he had just on his phone he had recut the entire video and was showing frame by and i saw before and after and his was way better just by recutting the footage that he was given in this video and he was able to explain why he rearranged things he trimmed things differently why he like certain scenes flowed into the other ones better than the other ones and how this reordering uh
Marco:
and recutting of this completely changed the feel and pace and and overall quality of this video and to see him do that it's like it's it i imagine like when when non-tech people see tech people like whiz through a problem on the computer super fast and it blows their mind that's how i felt watching this like i'm like oh my god like that's this is a skill set
Marco:
that people like Gray have because they're very experienced with this and they're very good at it.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
When I compare the way I approach making a video to the way that I saw a pro do it, my God, it's worlds apart.
Marco:
it like so like i don't even have the vocabulary to describe you know what it is that he was doing and why it was better but it was way better and the way he was explaining it it like it made total sense but i could never come up with that and so like you're getting started in this you know you don't have a lot of video experience right like you don't have like a secret youtube career that we didn't know about
Casey:
no and and and for those who listen to this if this makes the released version of the show like i have never ever edited a podcast truly i never have not once because it's always been either you or mike or you know one of your minions that has done it oh yeah we got an organization full of minions here
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
The two of you, just minions all the way down.
Casey:
But but you know what I mean?
Casey:
Like, I've never even edited a podcast.
Casey:
So I've dabbled in iMovie a couple times.
Casey:
And I think I've dabbled in GarageBand maybe once.
Casey:
But these are these are tools that I'm not familiar with.
Casey:
So I'm just kind of hacking at it.
Casey:
You know, I feel like I'm going through the jungle, not with a machete, but with like a pocket knife.
Casey:
And
Casey:
I do feel like I'm making forward progress, but unequivocally, what I release is going to look ham-fisted.
Casey:
What I hope, though, is that once you get past the crap audio and once you get past the fact that the timing is wrong, once you get past the fact that inevitably this video will run longer than it should, and I'm going to try my damnedest to cut it down, but I know it'll end up running too long—
Casey:
I hope that you, the collective you, can see this and say, I see the start of something here.
Casey:
It's probably not the end, hopefully not the end.
Casey:
And I can see how this is going to get better with time.
Casey:
And part of the way I've tried to do that is I do feel like my review, my video review is going to have a bit of a narrative.
Casey:
I feel like I have created an arc and I even took some engineering paper from college and like drew out like really crudely drawn storyboards, which I think I put on like my Insta stories.
John:
I saw those.
John:
I thought that was adorable.
Casey:
But that's how I'm trying to frame it in my head.
John:
Because you were doing it on real pencil and paper, like you're Mike Hurley or something.
Casey:
Yeah, which is barbaric, but it's the best way I could come up with to try to reason through the story I want to tell.
Casey:
And I think if I didn't at least have the beginnings in that regard...
Casey:
I would be totally lost and this video would never come out.
John:
But since I have... You could have done an Xcode storyboard.
John:
It's finally found a use for it.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
But I guess what I'm saying in a roundabout way is this is going to be embarrassing when I release it.
Casey:
If I do at all.
Casey:
It may be so embarrassing that I don't release it or I only send it to my friends.
Casey:
I don't know.
John:
You should.
John:
After you release this video, you should by all rights have the most popular YouTube channel on this podcast.
LAUGHTER
John:
I mean, I think Marco does have you have a lot of views on your on your your MacBook thing.
John:
But in theory, a review of an $80,000 sports sedan has more like general interest than yet another review of like a laptop.
John:
So I feel like you should come out as the undisputed views champion of ATP.
Yeah.
Casey:
I hope so.
Casey:
And I think my plan is to release it.
Casey:
I really do feel like I can get it to a point that I'm only lightly embarrassed by it rather than deeply embarrassed by it.
Casey:
But we'll see what happens.
Casey:
And
Casey:
Part of the reason I really want to release it is because I feel like I have a story here and that story may not be interesting to anyone else.
Casey:
It's like, you know, when you when you have like a really good slideshow of your vacation, right?
Casey:
To some degree, what we made you sit through, John, when when Marco and I went to Germany and then again, when we went to driving school, like to us, we had this like story arc and it was fascinating and exciting.
Casey:
But to you, it might have been a total frickin snooze.
Casey:
It may be the same thing here, but I feel like I have a story arc.
Casey:
I feel like I have something to say.
Casey:
And maybe it's completely selfish, but I have already filmed my conclusion.
Casey:
And I knew what I wanted to say, but I ad-libbed it.
Casey:
And I'm really, really happy with how it came out.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
I feel like I've got a decent start and I've got a pretty good end that I'm pretty happy with.
Casey:
So if I can just get the middle okay, then it'll be okay.
Casey:
And we'll see what happens.
Casey:
But I am having fun.
Casey:
And that's the other thing.
Casey:
If nothing else, I'm having fun.
Casey:
And I'm adding a tool to my tool belt.
Casey:
Will that be interesting or useful in the future?
Casey:
Maybe not.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
But Alfa Romeo has told me that they're going to give me another car next year, not a Giulia, something else.
Casey:
We'll see if it comes to fruition in part because baby.
Casey:
But in theory, I'll have access to an Alfa Romeo.
Casey:
My dad actually just bought an interesting car, which I can tell you two about privately later.
Casey:
So if he really and truly loves me, then maybe he'll let me review that.
John:
It might be easier to get your car from a manufacturer than from your dad.
Casey:
I think you might be right.
Casey:
And you haven't even met my dad.
John:
You know I only have one question.
Casey:
It is not white.
John:
Oh, it's silver.
John:
Didn't we see a picture of it last time?
Casey:
Yeah, it's silver.
Casey:
It's just shiny white.
Casey:
God, you're the worst.
Casey:
But you see what I'm saying?
Casey:
There is a way in which I can probably eke out a couple more videos.
Casey:
And if I have a handful of videos under my belt, maybe it's possible to get access to cars I wouldn't already have access to.
Casey:
And I've actually had a couple of people reach out via Twitter, which is extremely kind and nice of them, and say, hey, if you want to review my genuinely interesting car, I'm happy to do it.
Casey:
That works for regular car reviews.
Casey:
I don't know if I'm comfortable with that, because God forbid I broke something, like, then what?
Casey:
You know, or if I ran into somebody, then what?
Casey:
You know, so I'm not entirely comfortable with that, or at least not now.
Casey:
But it's been extremely flattering that somebody would be willing to even entertain the idea.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
Maybe this will be a one and done thing and I'll be embarrassed about it in a month or maybe even an hour after it's posted.
Casey:
But so far, I'm learning and having fun.
Casey:
And I know it's very like kumbaya and touchy feely, but that's really the most I can ask for at the moment, you know?
Marco:
Alright, let me pose an alternative path here.
Marco:
So, A, you waffled a minute ago about whether you'd even release this video.
Marco:
You definitely should release this video.
Marco:
Because the way you get better at making videos is by making videos.
Marco:
Just like everything else, you're not going to get good at something if you do it twice a year when you get a press car.
Marco:
That's not going to be enough.
Marco:
You should actually consider doing reviews of other cars, boring cars, other things that aren't cars.
Marco:
Review helicopters.
Marco:
I don't care.
Marco:
If this is a thing you want to get good at doing, you have to construct ways to do it more often.
Marco:
Because otherwise, you're never going to be able to create the kind of thing you want to create.
Marco:
If you're not getting more experience per unit of time, doing one of these a year is not going to be enough.
Marco:
So if you actually want this to be a thing that you get good at and that you do on a regular basis...
Marco:
Do more of it.
Marco:
Find ways to do more of it.
Marco:
And maybe that's just reviewing boring cars sometimes.
Marco:
If you make yourself a deal, review one car a month and then try to figure out how do you even do that?
Marco:
How do you get set up for that?
Marco:
How much effort do you have to make this fit within in order to be able to afford time-wise to do it once per month?
Marco:
set that system in motion and whether that's like you could have something like what if you like get friendly with a local used car dealer and whenever they have a cool used car in you know you give them you give them like some small amount of money and they let you borrow it for for a few days you know because then it's no sweat off their back it's used anyway you know like borrow for a few days maybe you like promote their dealership at the end of it or something you know like
Marco:
There are ways to solve this problem, and there are ways – if you want to only review cars and you don't want to borrow a friend's cars, there are ways around that.
Marco:
There are things that you can do here.
Marco:
And if that's not enough for you, first of all, review your car.
Marco:
Hello.
Marco:
You have –
Casey:
Well, but my car is old.
Casey:
It doesn't matter.
Marco:
You know what?
Marco:
There's a lot of people who are wanting to buy used BMWs and want to know which ones are good.
Marco:
None.
Marco:
And which ones have a lot of expensive work that needs to be done.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
People want...
Marco:
you're not going to compete with like you know the the pros for like getting all the high profile views for every brand new car people are going to go to the big reviewers for that where you can compete is on things the big reviewers aren't spending time on so you can compete with all the crazy cars you have you have access to in your everyday life and there's going to be someone looking for that
Marco:
And you can use those like lower profile, lower traffic, lower pressure videos to build your skills with so that on the off chance that you do get some kind of awesome new press car that is higher profile and expensive and fancy, you will already have built the skills.
Marco:
So you won't have to be learning on that one.
Marco:
Build the skills up in a more training wheels kind of environment where the stakes are lower and you can do it more often.
Marco:
And then you can be ready for when something big happens.
Casey:
Yeah, I completely agree with you.
Casey:
And I think just looking at my network, for lack of a better term, that sounds so LinkedIn.
Casey:
But maybe I could get some seat time in either your car or Underscore's car.
Marco:
You know how many car people you know?
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
Every conversation I have with you, you're telling me about one of your friends who has a cool car.
Marco:
You know so many car people.
Marco:
This is not a hard thing for you to do.
Marco:
If you wanted to set this up, you could very easily set this up.
Marco:
Not in Aaron's car.
Marco:
Yeah, Aaron's car, your car, your parents' cars, all your friends' cars.
Marco:
You can happily drive mine if you can get yourself here somehow.
Marco:
This is totally a thing that you can do.
Marco:
It is not that hard.
Marco:
If you want to get yourself set up with this, you already have a pretty good network in place to do it.
Marco:
It's a big time commitment, but developing any new skill like this is going to be.
Marco:
So if you want to do it,
Marco:
figure out a way to do it.
Marco:
Set it up.
Marco:
Make it a habit.
Marco:
And that's how you will get good at it.
Marco:
I'm not saying that you're going to make bad stuff.
Marco:
What I'm saying is, I know what you're going for and you're not going to be able to achieve the level you want to achieve unless you do it regularly.
Marco:
Unless you make a habit of it.
Marco:
Then you're going to develop the skills to do it over time.
Marco:
But you have to start doing that and you're not going to do that if you only get one car a year.
Casey:
Yeah, I completely agree with everything you said.
Casey:
And, you know, Aaron and I have talked about it a bit.
Casey:
And, you know, we've talked about, you know, is this worth spending money on, you know, outside of Final Cut Pro, obviously, like, is it worth me getting, you know, $100 lav mic and, you know, maybe a multi $100 like XLR portable recorder?
Casey:
And, and the answer is, we don't know.
Casey:
But
Marco:
Okay, stop right there.
Marco:
This stuff is really cheap.
Marco:
You don't need to spend that much money.
Marco:
What you need is an iPhone, maybe a gimbal for it, and some kind of small mic that you can clip to your shirt and record.
Marco:
But those are surprising.
Marco:
If you don't want something fancy and wireless that goes up to SLRs, you can go really cheap and it works.
Casey:
Oh, there you go.
Casey:
But my point is just like, you know, what what both time and financial commitment is worth?
Casey:
Is this worth?
Casey:
And on the surface, the conservative answer is not a single cent and not a single minute.
Casey:
But it's not quite that simple.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
Because what if like and I was talking to Aaron about this and this is probably going to be embarrassing to say at some point in my life, but I'm going to say it anyway.
Casey:
Suddenly this became analog.
Casey:
um what if this becomes another like livelihood for for me and my family and what if doing the podcast and doing these videos is enough to fund our existence and what if then i didn't have to go to a jobby job every day and what if i could then spend more time with my family you know like that's it's a moonshot i don't think that'll ever ever ever ever happen but
Casey:
why wouldn't I just give it a whirl and see what happens?
Casey:
And I'm basically repeating, I'm parroting what you said, Marco, back to you.
Casey:
But that's kind of the way I'm looking at it right now is, who knows?
Casey:
What if I have a bit of a knack for this?
Casey:
I feel like there's something here and it's not going to be mature and it's going to have problems.
Casey:
But why not, to use an underscore-ism, why not unpack this a little bit
Casey:
And see what I come up with.
Casey:
Because maybe, maybe I've got this.
Casey:
I mean, if you really want to go for the moonshot of the moonshot, what if I end up on Top Gear America in 10 years?
Casey:
Like, again, I understand how preposterous and comical that is.
Casey:
But who knows?
Casey:
Like, why should I say I can't do that?
Casey:
You never know.
Casey:
Weirder things have happened.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, look, and worst case scenario, you have a really cool, fulfilling hobby that you really enjoy.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
That's the worst case scenario.
Marco:
You get to film cars and talk about them.
Marco:
You do that anyway.
Marco:
I can't think of a better hobby for you to have.
Marco:
If you happen to be able to turn this hobby into a business, cool, that's bonus.
Marco:
But either way, it's good.
Marco:
Either way, it's going to make you happy to do it.
Marco:
Look, everybody has hobbies.
Marco:
John plays Destiny.
Marco:
You can shoot car videos.
Casey:
Right.
John:
i don't know john take me back to earth am i am i crazy i was just gonna say it's making me feel old to hear people whose spirits haven't been crushed by life yet that's the most john answer ever with optimism yeah i do play destiny and i make videos of me playing destiny uh and it's a fulfilling hobby wait do you have like a channel where you put those
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
Where?
Marco:
On the internet?
John:
I'll have you know I have dozens of views on my videos.
Casey:
Dozens.
Casey:
Dozens of us.
John:
Do you really like put these online somewhere?
John:
I have a YouTube channel.
John:
It's been mentioned on this show before.
John:
You do?
John:
You were here.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Even I knew that and I have no memory.
John:
there it is user syracusa there you go yeah that's you or somebody who's posing as you and also plays destiny whoa and plays destiny just the way i play it let me tell you the videos are action-packed 113 views yeah that's right wow oh you have a lot here i've been doing it for a while since destiny one
Casey:
You know, you're going to have to edit out all the times I mentioned Gray because I think there are times that he actually does listen to this show and I don't know what I said about him.
Casey:
It was all intended to be.
John:
He can handle it.
John:
He's a big boy.
Casey:
It was all intended to be complimentary.
John:
If he's smart, he'll pounce on me for using the phrase, lose the plot and say, ha ha, now you're using Britishisms.
Marco:
Actually, that's true.
Marco:
He'll jump on it straight away.
Marco:
That's right.
John:
His first videos were crap, too.
John:
He just didn't publish them.
John:
Or maybe he did.
John:
I think it was mentioned on an old HI episode that you have to keep your first really crappy video in your channel.
John:
You can't delete it.
Marco:
No, and that's the thing.
Marco:
You're comparing yourself to somebody who's been doing this for years.
Marco:
Oh, totally.
Marco:
Everyone starts out crappy.
Marco:
And if you only make one video a year, you're going to be crappy for a long time.
Marco:
If you do it, if you make this a new thing that you do on a regular basis, you have a much better chance of getting better over time.
Marco:
And again, this is me telling myself this as much as anything else.
Marco:
Don't focus on the gear.
Marco:
The gear is not your problem.
Marco:
You can do everything you need with an iPhone.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
That's all you need.
Marco:
Everything else is a bonus.
Marco:
It'd be nice to have a little bit better audio input that's a little closer to your mouth if you're going to be on camera.
Marco:
Otherwise, you don't really need that much.
Marco:
You don't think about the hundreds of dollars audio interface and stuff.
Marco:
You don't need it.
Marco:
Also, you already own one.
Marco:
But you don't need it.
Marco:
You only...
Marco:
The content of the video, the video footage itself, the writing of the video, the timing and the editing and the cutting and what you're saying is way more important than the equipment you have.
Marco:
And the fact is, the iPhone that you already will have anyway is the best video camera in the world for this type of thing most of the time.
Marco:
Not all the time.
Marco:
You can have specialized things and pros and everything, but if you want to just make a video as a newcomer to the field, just use your iPhone.
Marco:
It has everything you need built in.
Marco:
You already own it.
Marco:
Spend zero dollars.
Marco:
Just use the iPhone.
Casey:
Yeah, and so the stuff I did, I did with a GoPro, an old GoPro that I borrowed from work, and my iPhone.
Casey:
And there are a couple of things.
Casey:
I'll do voiceovers with a good mic, which is going to be jarring because it's going to be so much better than the stuff I filmed live, but...
Casey:
whatever um but and i recorded the exhaust note a couple of times with my good mic just to get a really good you know like the the beginning of this preview is actually the exhaust as recorded with the mic i'm speaking to you with now which i'm sure is wrong in some way or another because it's probably not the right mic for it but whatever um no it's not wrong just your mic is not filled with exhaust
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, whatever.
Casey:
Smells good, right?
Casey:
But you see, it was like a GoPro and an iPhone and my podcasting mic.
Casey:
To your point, I am 98% of the way there.
Casey:
The only problem I haven't really solved for is when the iPhone is several feet away from my body and...
Casey:
And I'm doing a live discussion.
Casey:
And by that, I mean, you know, I'm recording both video and audio.
Casey:
And I'm going to keep both the video and the audio.
Casey:
That's the thing I haven't solved for.
Casey:
And that's what's going to sound like garbage in this video, unless I like overdub or whatever the term is that actors do.
Casey:
If I dub over myself and try to record... Whatever it is.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So I try to like match my exact...
Casey:
don't do that delivery that i did at the time but i do it with my podcast mike and i don't think i'm capable of it i'll probably give it a shot just to see if it gets even close but i don't think i'm like that's incredibly hard like and i think like you have to be a very experienced actor probably to be able to have any chance of doing that well oh i'm sure you're right yeah but you should get declan to dub over you because that would make a good video
John:
yeah maybe i'm assuming i'm assuming you're you're overdubbing uh quadrifoglio with uh i haven't done it yet i haven't done it yet but i plan to do it at least the first time it's like slow down the video slightly like match it up so you'll look all weird
Marco:
no i mean it's like the secret to good audio for this purpose like you can get into any degree in any degree details but basically none of them matter as much as get a mic close to your mouth and it matters way less what that mic is how good it is like just get something that can be close to your mouth because even a really good mic even if you get like a really nice fancy shotgun mic that that's made for this purpose it does not sound nearly as good as a cheap lavalier next to your face
Casey:
Well, and the stopgap that I used, which you're going to yell at me for and you're right, is I used actually one of my AirPods.
Casey:
So I have one AirPod in my ear and that was what the audio was for.
Casey:
And it sounds like a telephone call, which is okay.
Casey:
But it's a lot better than me because the phone was probably 10 feet away for a lot of the stuff that I filmed.
Casey:
And so left with just the phone mic, it would have been nothing but like wind and a dim, faint version of me.
Casey:
And so it was the best I could do without spending any money.
Casey:
But I can tell you right now that if this gets posted, which I intend to post it, I guarantee that I'm going to get a bunch of complaints about the audio.
Casey:
And they're going to be fair because the audio is going to sound like garbage for the stuff that I filmed, quote unquote, in person.
Marco:
But it doesn't matter.
Casey:
I know, and that's why I'm just rolling with it.
Marco:
Just focus on it for next time.
Marco:
One thing you can do that's probably your cheapest option, really, without having to buy much of anything, you're going to have to buy probably a wired lavalier mic.
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
They're really cheap.
Marco:
They're under $50 for an even halfway decent wired lavalier.
Marco:
And what I suggest you do is plug it into something that can record the audio separately from the video.
Marco:
That way you don't have to worry about that.
Marco:
And then you can sync it up in Final Cut.
Marco:
You can sync up the audio, I think, automatically with the video.
Marco:
Somehow it syncs up.
Marco:
There's a way to do that.
Marco:
And you're doing short clips that drift is not going to be a noticeable problem in the time duration that you're doing.
Marco:
The other thing I would say is one thing to consider for what is recording that thing.
Marco:
It can be an old iPhone.
Marco:
like a second one like don't if you can't if you don't have like a long enough oh interesting point yeah if you don't have a long enough eighth inch cable to a lightning adapter to a dongle to fit into the new iPhone yeah I'm with you just use it use like an iPhone 5 that and you know run voice memos as you plug in a wired lavalier to its headphone jack that's compatible with it like that's a thing you can do too because all iPhones can be audio recorders
Marco:
uh so like that's that's going to be better than what you have now like it's going to be easier the other thing or you know you can get something like a zoom um h1 which is like this little tiny thing you could like you could i mean it's it's not invisible like you know you but you could like put it in a shirt pocket at least or somewhere near your mouth that is nearer than an iphone it's like it's you know kind of like a standalone recorder you can also run a wired lavalier into an h1's line in jack um that's the that's a thing a lot of people do
Marco:
So there's lots of options here that range from free because you already have the stuff to under $100.
Marco:
And you can go crazy.
Marco:
You can go way higher than that, but you don't need to.
Marco:
Don't even.
Marco:
I would even say just don't.
Marco:
Don't mess with that because it's so much more important now to get the other basics right.
Marco:
This is where I went totally wrong with mine.
Marco:
I got the fancy camera and the fancy tripod and I even bought an iPad teleprompting mount.
Casey:
I thought about doing that.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah.
Marco:
So I could use Joe Chaplinsky's Teleprompt Plus in there.
Marco:
I got all this crazy stuff so I could have teleprompter so I could be looking at the camera while I'm reading my text instead of looking off screen at my laptop with the notes on it and everything.
Marco:
I got this crazy setup and I ended up using most of it zero times or one time to make a mediocre video and I didn't make a video after that.
Marco:
It's like, if I make videos again, I'm going to instead just use my iPhone.
Yeah.
Marco:
in the gimbal that i also bought for some reason like i'm just gonna use it in that and shoot shoot myself and maybe i'll i'll have a lavalier mic to give myself better audio but that's as far as i would go probably in that department just because like yeah if i'm going to make videos again what i need is to make the process lower friction so i do it more
Marco:
And the only way I'm going to do that is by making it basically all iPhone and making it informal, you know, basically like making it like Periscope, you know, or Instagram live like that.
Marco:
Like that's because I had no problem doing those because they were informal and all iPhone based.
Marco:
So I just want I just need to do that.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so like you need to find out what that is for you, like find out how to make yourself do more videos so that you can get better at making videos so that when you get an opportunity like this, you can do you can do the kind that you actually want to do.
Casey:
Yeah, the only equipment I'm currently planning to buy, if any, is a lavalier mic of some sort and maybe a gimbal.
Casey:
And that's it.
Casey:
That's all I feel like I really need at this point because I can borrow a GoPro from work or there's a possibility that a listener might have actually a similar generation one that they're not using anymore.
Casey:
So he had offered to send it to me.
Casey:
Um, so I have a GoPro.
Casey:
I'll have a, uh, I'll have my phone, maybe like some sort of mount that I can mount between the headrests.
Casey:
Like if I get really serious, um, something that I can mount the GoPro to between the headrests, because basically the only mount I have right now is the suction cup mount, which is great for taking video of me, but less great for taking video of what's going out the
Casey:
But anyway, the point is I agree with you that there's very little I intend to spend money on unless I have a compelling reason to, which is to say things are going well.
Casey:
And if things are going well, then great.
Casey:
Why not throw money at it?
Casey:
But if things are as I expect, which is to say it was a fun blip on the radar for me and the people that care about me, then whatever.