We’re Doing a Show
John:
So, John, I'm curious.
John:
Do you realize how much of a Boston accent you have?
John:
I do not have a Boston accent.
John:
You don't even know what a Boston accent is.
John:
You haven't watched too many of the stupid, what's his name, Matt Damon's friend.
Casey:
Ben Affleck?
John:
Yeah.
Marco:
I know what a Boston accent is.
Marco:
Boston accent is, and I know you don't have a standard one, but you do have some of one.
Marco:
And I don't think you know this.
John:
I don't.
John:
I know during this podcast I misspoke and said some word that sounded like it has a Boston accent because I bailed in the middle of a word and changed to a different thing and it ended up coming out.
John:
I recognize that I did that in this episode.
John:
Yeah, that was not me doing a Boston accent.
John:
That was me totally misspeaking and trying to rope it back in the middle of a word and this weird sound coming out.
John:
rest assured I do not say that word that way I heard myself do it too but no I have a New York accent for as far as I have any accent that's why people complain about how you say Mario that's not a Boston thing look you live there you can't you can't deny that it's going to have an effect on you no it doesn't I'm not one of those people
Marco:
I'm not one of those people who picks up the accents from my surrounding.
Marco:
All my kids speak differently than me.
Marco:
You don't pick it up like 100%, but you definitely have some slight Boston influence in your speech.
Marco:
I don't think I do at all.
Marco:
Zero amount.
John:
You're so wrong.
John:
Zero amount.
John:
like some sort of weird access issue for the last two days trying to get to daring fireball like it's not a dns thing because i think it's going past the dns stage but it's just taking forever to load like i started to load a page before i picked up your call it's still loading the the progress bar it still has a white screen in safari is it possible that's because your computer is slower than like my phone from last year that's not it
John:
I can't love that demanding sight during Fireball with all its widgets and geegaws.
John:
Geegaws.
Casey:
Widgets and what?
Casey:
How old are you?
John:
What is a geegaw?
John:
It's a word.
John:
Are you sure?
John:
How the hell do you spell that?
John:
I'm very sure.
John:
G-E-E-G-A-W.
Marco:
I think it was officially removed from the dictionary 30 years ago.
Casey:
A showy thing, especially one that is useless or worthless.
Casey:
And also it's usually G-E-W-G-A-W.
Casey:
A goo-gaw.
John:
That's what I said.
Casey:
I thought you said gee-gaw.
John:
Oh, you're right.
John:
I did.
John:
All right.
John:
Well, then maybe gigaw isn't a word.
John:
Is it an alternate spelling?
Casey:
Yeah, I think so, because I looked up gigaw and ended up with goo-gaw.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Casey:
Well, I guess it's just an autocorrect thing, because it's usually goo-gaws.
Casey:
Apparently, it's usually plural.
Casey:
Wow, this is already taking a turn for the unexpected.
John:
It's important to get things like this right.
John:
No, Merriam-Webster has it.
John:
It's a less common variant of goo-gaw.
Casey:
I don't want to do this for a second follow-up because I really don't want to hear any more whining about the new MacBook Pros, gentlemen.
John:
It'll be quick.
John:
It's a quickie.
John:
It's a quickie.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Yeah, I'm sure that once you bring up a complaint about the MacBook Pro, it's totally going to be a three-second endeavor.
John:
It is.
John:
I wanted to put the news quick in there.
John:
It will be quick, I promise.
Casey:
I guarantee that it won't be.
Casey:
Great.
Casey:
I'm already punchy.
Casey:
You having a holiday party?
Casey:
No, I'm not.
Casey:
I should be.
Casey:
That's the problem, especially given this first item of follow-up.
Casey:
I need a holiday party.
Casey:
Look, until the laptops are fixed, we're going to keep talking about them.
Casey:
Hey, you know what?
Casey:
They're not all bad.
Casey:
That's true.
Marco:
Anyway.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
60% of them don't have keyboard failures, apparently, or fine.
Marco:
Yeah, but they were all bad.
Casey:
I don't know that reference, John.
Casey:
Don't care.
Casey:
I'm already punchy, so let's just get it out of the way.
Casey:
We're starting with follow-up, ladies and gentlemen, and apparently John thinks that his complaint about a 2016 or 17 MacBook Pro will be, and I'm quoting, very quick, I guarantee it.
Casey:
So look at the timer.
Casey:
Look at the elapsed time.
Casey:
Let's go.
Casey:
Buckle up, kids.
Casey:
What's going on, John?
John:
I've got one of these at work, remember?
John:
So I use it every day.
John:
So I have occasion to have complaints.
John:
Anyway, I noticed this today.
John:
I very rarely do anything with my laptop at work except keep it closed and plug it in to other devices.
John:
But I was in a lot of meetings today and I had the laptop open and the lighting was just right.
John:
And it occurred to me that still in 2017, Apple is making keyboards where the keys touch the screen when you close it.
John:
And that's been true for...
John:
years and years and years and years has it ever not been true has apple ever made a keyboard where the keys don't touch the screen well guess what finger grease is on the keys and now finger grease is on my keyboard in the shape on my screen in the shape of my keyboard uh in the long list of things that we want apple to correct i believe that it is possible for apple to make a computer laptop computer when you close it the grease from your fingers on the keys does not come off onto the screen and you don't get a greasy outline of all the keys on the keyboard on your screen i believe that's possible we have very low profile keys
John:
They're all about thinness.
John:
That's it.
Marco:
Well, I think they did.
Marco:
I don't know if they still do.
Marco:
On my original PowerBook G4, the aluminum PowerBook G4, that was my first Mac, I had heard about this problem.
Marco:
And back then, when you had the matte screen, it was a lot easier for a permanent imprint to develop because you couldn't really wipe off the screen coating very much to clean it.
Marco:
And I had heard about this, and so I decided as a policy that I would carry the laptop...
Marco:
in the backpack such that the screen lid was not facing my back.
Marco:
It was facing the other way.
Marco:
Carrying it this way every day to and from work and everything, I never had that problem.
Marco:
That computer never developed the imprint of the keyboard on the screen.
Marco:
And my theory was that in a perfect layout of the laptop like on a desk, the screen and keyboard don't actually touch.
Marco:
But if there's any flex that's squeezing the laptop a little bit from the sides, like in a bag...
Marco:
Any flex is enough to push the screen against the keyboard inside there because it's such a tiny little gap.
Marco:
And I imagine over time that gap has only gotten smaller.
Marco:
So it's possible that while sitting on a desk, it doesn't press against it, but that if you have it in a bag or in a certain kind of stand that stands it up, like anything that would possibly apply pressure to the outside of it, like books next to it in a bag, that might compress it just enough to make that contact happen.
John:
yeah i'm sure that's what's happening but i'm saying you know we got the butterfly keyboard how many years ago casey we can make a keyboard that like collapses into the case and gets out of flex distance i don't know i'm just saying it's an area of potential improvement not just for this laptop but you know we do have very low profile keys i figure like just that gap should be getting bigger and not smaller because nobody likes greasy keys on our screen
Marco:
No, no, you're asking them to make even lower profile keys.
Marco:
Please, for the love of God, do not solve this problem in this way.
John:
Just move the whole keyboard down.
John:
You can make high keys, but then have them sink into the keyboard magically.
John:
I don't know.
John:
No one should use laptops.
John:
They're bad.
Casey:
They're not bad.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
The butterfly keyboard was 1995.
Casey:
I'll put links in the show notes.
Casey:
I actually noticed it was either today or yesterday that on my beloved MacBook Adorable, which I wouldn't change in any way.
Casey:
I actually would, but don't tell them.
Casey:
Anyway, I noticed that on that machine, I generally hold it, I don't know, by maybe the hinge, or I don't even remember, and it's not sitting next to me, so I can't demonstrate to myself.
Casey:
But I was holding it in such a way that I felt like it was giving a little bit, and I think I was putting a little bit of pressure toward the center of the screen, which is not something I normally do.
Casey:
I don't like to mess with the LCD.
Casey:
But it just so happened that I gripped it in such a way that I noticed that if I put pressure on the center of the LCD, roughly where the Apple logo is, while it's closed, I can feel it give enough to come into contact with the bottom part of the case.
Casey:
So it's just like you're describing, John, where clearly the screen is now impacting the keys.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
I don't recall ever having a laptop that did that, and I'm probably wrong, and I bet all of them do it, but it was a very uncomfortable, very unnerving feeling that I did not like, and that happened to me in the last 24 hours.
Casey:
I will also note, to go back a step to Marco's strategies to avoid keyboard grease,
Casey:
I knew for a long time several super nerds that used to keep – I don't even think they still come in the MacBooks or MacBook Pros anymore.
Casey:
But it used to be when you bought an Apple laptop.
Casey:
You know where this is going, right?
Casey:
So they used to have this sheet of like not –
Casey:
foam, but like some sort of foam like material that would be between the display and the keyboard.
Casey:
And I knew a lot of people that would carry that with them and then put it in their device before they close the lid in order to prevent any sort of scraping against the screen.
Casey:
And I always thought that was crazy until one day I noticed an outline of a keyboard on my screen and thought, well, OK, that's a little bit weird, but maybe not so crazy after all.
Marco:
No, and people still do that.
Marco:
And there were even... There were third-party, like, cloths that would fit it perfectly also that people would do.
Marco:
That was a pretty widespread thing for a while.
Marco:
And I think it is still done by about the same number of people that ever did it.
Marco:
But to me, that always felt too... It's like John having his phone in a pouch that has... He has, like, taken it out of this pouch before he uses it.
Marco:
Like, that's, like, a step too far for me.
Marco:
And with the laptop, that's, like, you know, that is... Having, like...
Marco:
a piece of cloth that i stick between the laptop keyboard and lib when i close it and then have to open it up and take it off every time like that that's like too fiddly for me like i would rather have the imprint of the keyboard than have to do that every single time all i hear is that you're too jealous of my incredibly clean phone but this brings up apple's uh actual solution to this problem and the grand tradition of uh steganography uh
John:
If they just made their screens touch screens, then the giant amount of finger grease randomly placed all over the screen would mask the shape of the keyboard, which would still be there hidden in the information, but you wouldn't be able to see it.
Marco:
Especially if they coded it with whatever's coding the 10.5 inch iPad Pro screen, which is so like this is the most fingerprinty iOS device I think I've ever had.
Marco:
i heard they had to change the coding uh for the apple pencil like to make that work well and not wear it weirdly uh but whatever whatever is different the 9.7 didn't seem this bad the 10.5 ipad pro is it just is a constant wall of fingerprints it is hideous i i wish i knew uh any way to prevent that besides using gloves or using one of john's pouches stop touching your screen yeah i guess i could just use mind control or keyboard shortcuts uh
Marco:
Speaking of phone cases, I do have some follow-up.
Marco:
You are still casey-less, but I am no longer caseless.
Marco:
Oh, yeah?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So as winter is setting in here on the East Coast, in these places that have winter, unlike you, Casey, cold, dry hands that I'm getting on some of these days made me feel a lot less secure about carrying the iPhone X caseless.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
first i i tried there there's a there's a vendor that i will put in these show notes um whose name i have forgotten again i keep kept reading this name um that uh it's basically i think it's this i think it's one guy in brooklyn who laser cuts leather stick on backings like from real pieces of leather they're really nice and they're only 25 bucks so like it's not it's not like a crazy crazy thing
Marco:
And I have one on my iPhone 4 and I moved it to the iPhone 4S when I got that.
Marco:
Because having like a flat piece of leather on the back of the phone only, it does not cover the sides and it has a cutout for the camera.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
But it's just like leather with a hole for the camera, no logos, just blank leather and it's high quality.
Marco:
So it feels really soft and nice.
Marco:
Having that on the back of the iPhone 4 with the glass back felt awesome.
Marco:
It was fantastic.
Marco:
I was so glad to have it.
Marco:
I figured... Let me try that again for the iPhone X. And I used it for a few days, and it does indeed feel good most of the time.
Marco:
But the iPhone X, because it doesn't have straight sides... And the 4 also had a little tiny rubber gasket lip that ran around the glass on the back.
Marco:
So it kind of provided a little wall to keep the border of whatever stick-on thing you had on the back there clean and contained.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The new phones don't have that.
Marco:
They're so curvy and rounded on the sides that any kind of stick-on thing that only covers the back, if it has any thickness at all, if it's more than just a vinyl sticker kind of thing, if it has any thickness at all, it kind of has to create its own edge.
Marco:
And that edge kept getting peeled up as I would just handle the phone.
Marco:
Clearly, this is not really made for this anymore.
Marco:
And so, as much as I love the feel of that, I decided I need something else that provides grip.
Marco:
went to the apple store and uh felt all the cases and i actually like they props to the apple store it used to be impossible to try out a case in the apple store then the stores had these like some stores would have like these tables in the middle somewhere where they would have like a little box or rack full of cases that you could try on like with an employee's help and
Marco:
And now they just have an example case on the little post that the boxes for the cases are hanging on.
Marco:
And you can just pick it up and stick it on the phone that you have in your pocket.
Marco:
You can even put it in your pocket and nobody arrests you.
Marco:
And then you can go put it back and decide whether to buy it or not.
Marco:
And so you can actually try out all the cases on your phone, in your hand, and in your pocket to see how they all feel.
Marco:
which is really nice.
Marco:
I got to give him credit for that.
Marco:
Anyway, I tried the silicone case because that provides the best grip of all the cases.
Marco:
But when it goes in and out of a pocket, I have a serious problem with the amount of friction that it has there.
Marco:
I may eventually go to that anyway, but I'm hoping I don't have to.
Marco:
I tried the black leather case.
Marco:
First, I tried the red leather case.
Marco:
I tried colors and everything.
Marco:
The colors seemed way too aggressive to me because they come up around the edge.
Marco:
And so you're not just seeing the color on the back of your phone.
Marco:
You're seeing the color framing everything on your phone all the time.
Marco:
And that, to me, it just looked... Maybe it was because I had just done it for the first time, but it looked a little garish.
Marco:
I didn't want this bright red...
Marco:
three quarters of a rectangle around my content all the time.
Marco:
So I went with just the Apple black leather case, the same one I had used for the 6 and 6S.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
I'm not incredibly happy with it, I got to say, just because it still has the same problem of like it collects dust around the rim between it and the phone on the front.
Marco:
It does cover up a lot of what makes this phone attractive, like case design wise.
Marco:
But
Marco:
It does smooth out the camera bump completely, which is very nice because the iPhone X has a very prominent camera bump, even more so than the previous phones.
Marco:
And it really stands up far off a desk and makes it hard to lie flat.
Marco:
So the Apple other case does fix that.
Marco:
But ultimately, the one thing I'm kind of dissatisfied with is just that it makes the phone a lot bigger in the hand.
Marco:
Casey, did you ever use yours caseless?
Casey:
I have very, very, very, very briefly, but I am way too scared, especially since I didn't pony up for AppleCare this time.
Casey:
I'm way too scared to do it with any sort of regularity.
Casey:
And so it is almost exclusively lived in the weather case, in the leather case.
Casey:
And so I do quite like the leather case.
Casey:
I've used leather cases on and off for most of my history with iPhones.
Casey:
I feel like
Casey:
This one, I am particularly... I don't know what word I'm looking for.
Casey:
Frustrated, annoyed, displeased.
Casey:
But one of those negative adjectives.
Casey:
Because I feel like I'm getting way more pocket lint around the sides than I've ever had before.
Casey:
That's probably me being completely bananas, but it just seems that way.
Casey:
And I think because the phone is a little bit thicker to begin with than the 7, which in and of itself, fine...
Casey:
But then add to your point the leather case on top of that, which is not thin.
Casey:
And by comparison to the 7, which I've been handling once or twice a week for various reasons, trying to get old data off my phone or whatever, it feels way thicker than my 7 does.
Casey:
And if you recall, my 7, I did not use a case on for the first time in forever because I did get AppleCare and ended up breaking the screen.
Casey:
And this...
Casey:
AppleCare or not, this one, I just don't trust myself because I think I will break it without question.
Casey:
So that is many words to say.
Casey:
I have the leather case.
Casey:
I have often used the leather case, and I feel like it's the best option I've seen, but I don't really love it.
Marco:
Yeah, I was thinking about trying out one of those dbrand skins that MKBHD likes a lot.
Marco:
I tried one of those on my 6 and my 6 Plus back when I was experimenting with those, and they were decent.
Marco:
They were especially good values because they were really cheap.
Marco:
It was like $12 for the whole phone or something like that.
Marco:
It's a very good price, very good value, but I don't think they look particularly good.
Marco:
I think they look a little bit cheesy and tacky, and
Marco:
The main problem I had is it just didn't provide that much more grip than just the bare phone.
Marco:
So I think what I'm probably going to do is use the leather case on and off like when it's cold and my hands are all dry and slippery.
Marco:
But then most of the time when I don't need it for that reason, just use it bare again because it's so much more pleasant using it without a case.
Casey:
It definitely is.
Casey:
And remind me, you do or do not have AppleCare on that?
Casey:
I do not.
Marco:
Oh, you are a brave soul.
Marco:
No, I mean, and look, I admit it's a risk, but it's also $200 plus the fee to replace it if I drop it.
Marco:
Plus, there's a limit on how many times you can drop it.
Marco:
And it's like, okay, let me see if I ever actually drop it.
Marco:
And if I start dropping it so much that I think an extra $200 a year is a good deal, then I will change my policy.
Marco:
But again, right now, because I've never dropped and broken a phone, so far, it's not a good policy for me.
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
I mean, really, the only clear, obvious answer is to just put it in a little baggie every time you're done using it.
Casey:
I mean, why would you do anything else?
Casey:
It's the only logical conclusion.
John:
Keeps the screen clean.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
John:
Don't have to worry about scratching on stuff in my pockets.
John:
All right.
John:
It's only when I'm outside the house.
Marco:
Not when I'm in the house.
Marco:
See, to me, the screen would even, or the little pouch that John has to drop his phone in and out of, that to me would increase the risk of dropping it.
Marco:
Because that's one more thing that you have to put it into, and what if you slightly miss the edge of the pouch and it falls off?
John:
Yeah, that could happen.
John:
I've never dropped my phone, but if you are prone to dropping, this probably...
Marco:
increases your chances of dropping right and more opportunity to miss something right and on the way out too it's like here's one more thing you have to take the phone out of maybe if you reach into your pocket you pull it out and maybe you forget that it's in there and it accidentally slips out the bottom of the pouch like there's so many conditions where i think that's actually increasing your risk of damage
John:
It probably is, but like I said, it hasn't happened to me.
John:
All of my phone drops are when I'm clumsily trying to get it off of my nightstand, and it's not in a pouch.
John:
It's totally just because I'm not awake, or it's dark, or I'm being careless.
John:
That's the main place my phone falls, is off of my nightstand onto the rug or hardwood floor next to it.
Casey:
Aye, aye, aye.
Casey:
All right, so we were ostensibly doing follow-up at some point, right?
John:
We got derailed with Marco's case woes.
Marco:
I think we're always ostensibly doing follow-up.
John:
My MacBook Pro follow-up was quick.
Casey:
Marco, I think you're right.
Casey:
Are we ever really not in follow-up?
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So who added this glove thing?
John:
i did because remember we talked about the uh the kickstarter for those like touch id fingerprint sticker things you can stick on your gloves and like who knows if that's even a thing well we got a report that it actually is a thing of course in japan you can buy them for seven dollars what do you mean of course in japan what's that supposed to be it's the old uh 80s or 90s stereotype that japan is living like 20 years in our future and everything is awesome there which is not actually true but it's the it's the old uh
John:
The old saw from back when I was a kid when Japan was going to take over the world because they can make better cars than us.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Good save.
Casey:
Still can.
Marco:
True.
Casey:
Not California.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
You're the worst.
Casey:
Oh, wait.
Casey:
Is this episode 250?
Casey:
Yeah, it is.
Marco:
Yay.
Casey:
Oh, this is our 250th spectacular.
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
What are we doing?
John:
Happy whatever this is.
John:
This is it.
John:
We're doing a show.
Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.
John:
oh my god this is the most atp moment of any atp moment we're just we're lucky we remembered it like not not too far into the show no i i totally i was not pretending that to remember it you did mention it like a week or two ago but i would not have thought i mean marco should think of as he sees the episode numbers when he does like the uh like writes out the files and stuff
Marco:
Well, and I thought about it earlier this evening when I recorded the ads, but because I put them in a folder called ATP 250.
Marco:
There you go.
Marco:
And I thought, oh, it's this week.
Marco:
And then I promptly forgot as soon as I stopped doing it.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Away.
Marco:
For $20 off a suitcase, visit awaytravel.com slash ATP and use promo code ATP during checkout.
Marco:
Away makes awesome high-quality suitcases.
Marco:
They come in over 10 colors and 5 sizes, from small kid size through the wonderful popular carry-on sizes, all the way up to medium and large for longer stays.
Marco:
All Away suitcases are made with high-quality German polycarbonate that's very lightweight and very strong, while offering a much lower price compared to traditional brands by cutting out retail and selling directly to you.
Marco:
They have all sorts of convenient features, like four spinning wheels instead of two, a patent-pending compression system on the inside to help you pack a lot of stuff in there if you need to, a removable and washable laundry bag, a TSA-approved combination lock, and one of the coolest features is in their carry-ons, they have built-in USB batteries, so you can actually charge your phone while you're waiting in an airport for your flight, and it's wonderful because you never have to arrive with an empty phone.
Marco:
It's one of those convenient little features that you wonder, like, how did anybody ever not have this in a suitcase?
Marco:
It's pretty awesome.
Marco:
And of course, all this is backed by their lifetime warranty.
Marco:
If anything ever breaks, they will fix or replace it for you for life.
Marco:
You can see for yourself with a hundred day trial.
Marco:
You can actually buy an away suitcase, travel with it, actually travel with it for up to a hundred days.
Marco:
And at the end, if you decide it's not right for you, you can return it for a full refund with no questions asked.
Marco:
So consider Away this holiday season.
Marco:
Away bags and accessories make for the perfect gift with their lifetime guarantee and that 100-day trial.
Marco:
So there's a perfect size and color for everyone on your list this holiday season.
Marco:
Or if you can't make up your mind for somebody, you can give them an Away gift card.
Marco:
Check out Away today at awaytravel.com slash ATP and use promo code ATP during checkout for $20 off your suitcase.
Marco:
Once again, that is awaytravel.com slash ATP and promo code ATP at checkout for $20 off a suitcase.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Away for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Aaron Lenard writes, I agree with most of your points.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
On the 2016 MacBook Pro 15-inch, but we'll make one point of exception.
Casey:
I would not want to live without Touch ID that was introduced on this model.
Casey:
I'm a consultant and have to use 1Password constantly.
Casey:
Oh, I remember those days.
Casey:
Throughout the day to access client systems.
Casey:
I have some RSI issues from time to time in using a fingerprint versus constantly typing.
Casey:
To have my very long and complex master password is life-changing to my workflow and efficiency.
Casey:
This one feature offsets much of the criticism that I share regarding the other issues.
Casey:
I think that makes sense.
Casey:
I've never used a computer with Touch ID.
Casey:
If you recall, the most modern laptop I have is my MacBook Adorable.
Casey:
The one I use for work is that piece of garbage that some popular Apple blogger recommended recently that's like 13 years old.
Casey:
Oh, it was Marco.
Casey:
That's right.
Yeah.
Casey:
So anyway, so I have a 2015, I think it's 2015 MacBook Pro.
Casey:
I have only ever used touch bars for like 30 seconds at a time in the Apple store.
Casey:
I don't know what this amazing future is where you can use touch ID, but it sounds pretty good.
Casey:
But you know what sounds even better?
Casey:
Face ID.
Casey:
I want that in my life.
John:
That's exactly why I put this in here.
John:
It's like, yes, touch ID is great, but really what you really want is face ID because then you don't even have to put your finger up and your face is always right there in view of the camera and touch ID on laptops will be so much better.
John:
Face ID on laptops will be so much better than touch ID.
John:
And as someone who has touch ID...
John:
You know, obviously I don't use it in clamshell most of the time, but even when it's not in clamshell, like when I'm carrying it around for meetings and have to unlock it because, you know, I like all work laptops.
John:
It locks instantly if you like glance away from it for two seconds.
John:
It is.
John:
And I don't know if this is the fault of touch.
John:
I don't think this is the fault of touch.
John:
I think it's the fault of all the evil software that enterprises make you put on your computer to make them crappier.
John:
but god you open that thing up and i put my finger on that touchpad and it's like a long time before that computer does anything why probably has something to do with active directory or wi-fi certificates or god knows what it's doing but all i know is it's not reading my fingerprint and unlocking the computer same thing when i disconnect it and connect it from my really awesome super duper thunderbolt dock thingy that lets me have one cable that plugs in to power this whole thing of peripherals
John:
that's great part that's not great as i plug or unplug that cable i might as well go for a drink while my computer does something i don't know what it's doing sometimes i get a beach ball sometimes i don't get a beach ball sometimes it remembers my clicks and replays them a minute later sometimes it doesn't remember my clicks and replay them later
John:
it just like you're it just it's like it says to me you're not going to use me for a while because i'm doing something and i and maybe it's wrong for me to always blame active directory but i do pretty much always blame active directory because i don't i was not formerly on the active directory network with my old computer and now i am and everything is worse
Marco:
One thing I've found, which probably is not going to be helping your issues here, unfortunately, but when I first got my wonderful but used 2015, it would occasionally fail to wake up from sleep.
Marco:
And I thought this was a High Sierra bug.
Marco:
But it turns out that it's just a 15-inch MacBook Pro 2015 bug that seemed to exist before High Sierra.
Marco:
And it has to do, apparently, with PowerNap.
Marco:
If you disable PowerNap,
Marco:
it completely stops.
Marco:
This problem just goes away completely.
Marco:
I also notice sometimes that it would seem to be running and warm while in my bag charging.
Marco:
So very obviously a power nap-related problem.
Marco:
But I also, as part of the attempts to diagnose this problem, disabled hibernation.
Marco:
Because what every MacBook Pro does since the 2012 model is the 2012 Retina model, not the 2012 non-Retina.
Marco:
Because back then, when they introduced a radical new design, they also updated the previous design with the new components.
Marco:
Anyway, since 2012 Retina MacBook Pro and forward, one of the reasons why they now get such better standby battery life is that after a few hours of not being woken up, if they're not plugged in, they go into full hibernation, which PC users have been familiar with for a long time, which basically means they write the contents of RAM to a file on disk and fully turn off.
Marco:
Then when you boot it up, it has to wake up from that deep hibernation by reading that hyperfile back into RAM, and that's why it takes a little bit longer.
Marco:
You might see a little bit different progress bar when it boots up.
Marco:
This is slow and crappy, and if you are leaving your computer unplugged from battery for...
Marco:
two weeks, it's very helpful.
Marco:
But if you plug it in like every day and you're just leaving it closed for a few hours, then this is very annoying.
Marco:
And so I disabled that.
Marco:
And by the way, once you disable that, you can also delete the hibernation file, which can get you back in disk space the amount of RAM you have, which is nice.
Marco:
Look up on every Mac forum since 2012 on how to do this.
Marco:
Since I disabled both PowerNap for the weird bugs and the hibernation with whatever like the sudo PM set command is to do it,
Marco:
it wakes up way faster from sleep.
Marco:
Because what you're describing, John, that's happened to every MacBook Pro for quite a while.
Marco:
I did notice in my time using the touch bar versions, that was always way worse on the touch bars.
Marco:
So whatever it's doing, waking up from sleep or hibernation or whatever it is,
Marco:
Something seems to be extra long or delayed or blocking or waiting for something on touch bar models.
Marco:
That was worse when they first came out.
Marco:
Subsequent software improvements have dropped that delay somewhat, but they still do it.
Marco:
Are you on High Sierra yet?
John:
We're just going to let subsequent fly by, huh?
John:
Okay, I guess it's only bezels.
John:
subsequent whatever yeah i know um it's uh yeah no i don't think i don't think it's hibernation or power nap although i like i routinely disable those as well for usually for disk-based reasons like i've been doing that ever since you know ever since the ram got so big that it started to eat a chunk but i come to think about maybe i didn't do that on my work mac but
John:
I'm sure it's not hiberding.
John:
Like, this is me.
John:
Like, I close it, and then 30 seconds later, I open it.
John:
Like, it hasn't gone into hibernation at that point, right?
John:
And it's not like the screen is inert when it's coming out of hibernation.
John:
Some things work, and sometimes I can click and bring an application to the front, like, before the beach ball appears, but then eventually it stops responding.
John:
PowerNap, I haven't looked into.
John:
Because, again, like, you know, PowerNap should only happen like, oh, your computer's been asleep for a while.
John:
Now it's going to check email or some crap or do local time machine snapshots.
John:
And I haven't disabled that, and I'm sure my computer is doing that.
John:
um if it would ever go to sleep i think i have it set never to sleep because it's plugged in and battery power but maybe there's some other weird interaction where if powered app is enabled at all it does some weird thing and you just wake it up so i'll try both those things and get back to you but i don't like having to do this voodoo i like to just open the computer up and i mean the screen turns on immediately and it seems you know it seems like it's ready to go in terms of like the mouse cursor moves like it just i don't know it's
John:
it's it's like golf is a good walk spoiled like laptops are a good computer spoiled like just desktops they work fine you walk up to them you wiggle the mouse you hit the keyboard like you're there you just go and like computer's like yes i'm here use me now and the laptop's like i don't know i don't know about that
John:
And that's what makes Touch ID worse is because your finger's there.
John:
It's like, can I lift my finger?
John:
When should I put my finger down?
John:
Should I wait for the little animation on the touch bar saying Touch ID here?
John:
Has it already authenticated me?
John:
And I'm just waiting.
John:
That's often the case.
John:
Sometimes it's already authenticated.
John:
I give up.
John:
I take my finger off.
John:
And I'm like, come on, computer.
John:
What are you doing?
John:
And then it unlocks, like based on a finger that was laid on there like 15 seconds ago.
John:
I don't like laptops.
Casey:
You know, you're right.
Casey:
When I am in a car in the passenger seat and I need to do a little bit of work, I like bringing my iMac and my inverter.
John:
You have nothing to be ashamed of.
John:
Nothing to apologize for.
John:
Sorry, I blew it.
John:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I'm getting too old.
Casey:
When I'm on an airplane, you know what the best way to use a computer on an airplane is?
Casey:
27-inch iMac.
Casey:
Hell, yeah.
Casey:
That's where I like to use my desktops.
Casey:
what i'm learning over over time as i get old and and more like john is that like i would rather just not use a computer in a car and just wait till i get back to my 27 inch iMac oh my god listeners i oh i hope somebody out there is face i literally just facepalmed i hope somebody else out there is facepalming as bad as i am because you guys man the combined age of the two of you is approximately 134 years old
John:
No, actually, the real answer, I mean, the thing that both Marco and I think everyone agree on, iOS devices.
John:
You don't have these problems on iOS devices.
John:
Imagine if you took out your iOS device, like your iPad, and hit the power switch and had to wait the amount of time I have to wait to use my laptop.
John:
It would be like, is this thing broken?
John:
Instantly, like face ID, touch ID, it's ready to go.
John:
Instantly, immediately.
John:
None of this whole, like, let me wake up and do whatever I'm doing and put a beach ball.
John:
There's no place to put a beach ball.
John:
If an iOS device does that, it seems broken.
John:
And...
John:
It made more sense, like, well, iOS devices, you can only run one application at a time, and they're highly optimized.
John:
But at this point, iOS devices have faster CPUs than Macs, are multitasking, they're still RAM-starved, but they're full-fledged machines, and it's just something in the... I remember when there was an effort a while back to... I don't know if this was a public marketing effort or just something that people would say behind closed doors or whatever, that trying to make the Mac...
Marco:
experience like the ios experience like when you just open it up and it's ready to go actually that was on stage wasn't it didn't steve jobs say that at one point like the macbook air is like no it was it was basically it was a it was a story that that had gotten out of apple that that apparently steve there was a famous meeting where steve walked in and dropped a macbook air on the table and dropped and had like an ipad and turned the ipad on from sleep and just comes on and he's looked at the macbook air like why can't this do that something like that there you go
John:
Yeah, so who knows if it was real or not.
John:
But anyway, I endorse that idea that iOS devices feel so much better because there's so much crap that is just unacceptable on an iOS device.
John:
And on the Mac, we're still suffering under the burden of, you know, this older behavior that I guess laptop users just live with and just think it's the price of using a laptop.
John:
And I don't like it.
Marco:
Well, the job that a laptop has to do is way more complicated.
Marco:
A lot of that waking up from sleep delay is stuff like checking USB peripherals and stuff like that that iPads don't have to worry about.
Marco:
But a lot of it is just legacy stuff they could get rid of if they really tried.
Marco:
But the Mac is not in a position where it's getting a lot of effort for the most part, it seems.
Casey:
I thought that Macs hibernated every time they went to sleep.
Casey:
They just kept the memory powered on until the battery had dropped quite a bit or was at a dangerous level or something like that.
Casey:
I thought they always wrote the contents of RAM to disk every single time.
John:
I hope that's not true.
John:
Again, I routinely disable it on the laptops that are in my house just to save the disk space.
John:
But if that's also a benefit, I'll look into it.
John:
I'll make sure it's off on my work one and see how it goes.
Casey:
Last bit of follow-up.
Casey:
Dan Lear writes in, this is with regard to our Thanksgiving list from last episode.
Casey:
Nobody's thankful for the Switch.
Casey:
I'm surprised the Switch didn't make anyone's list, despite how much time you've talked about Zelda, Mario Kart, Stardew Valley, and playing with friends and family, etc.
Casey:
For me, it was both an omission by accident and somewhat deliberately.
Casey:
I still do use my Switch from time to time.
Casey:
What does that mean?
Casey:
Well, so some, I think John put this in the show notes and he cut the key piece that, which was, I believe Dan had said basically, is this because it was a fad or because you just don't, or you just didn't think of it.
Casey:
And for me, it's kind of both, right?
Casey:
Like I didn't think of it at the time, but even if I had, I don't know that I would have said it because I don't use my switch near as much as I did when I first got it.
Casey:
And I do still like it and I'm glad I spent the money on it.
Casey:
um but it's very rare i find myself picking that up in the evenings but i've also been just super super busy for quite a long time now but you know when my my family gets together you know like well really aaron's family a couple of my uh in-laws have have switches and so we've been you know generally speaking bringing them with us when we have a family function and we'll play like a couple rounds of mario kart or something like that so
Casey:
I am thankful for it.
Casey:
I definitely like it.
Casey:
But that is what is the top four etiquette?
Casey:
That's my number five or tied for number four.
Casey:
Or is this my like my seventh place tie for number one?
John:
It's one of your 17 honorable mentions.
Casey:
That's what it is.
Casey:
Yeah, it's one of my 17 honorable mentions.
Casey:
That's right.
Casey:
But what about the two of you guys?
Marco:
i mean for me i i should have put the switch on my list and i i simply forgot about it while making that list which is funny because i played it like an hour before and played it again the next day so yeah the switch has been fantastic for me and you know as the audience knows i am not much of a gamer at all most of the time um i i usually get into like
Marco:
one game a year maybe i'll be into it for like a week or two and then i'll stop and then that'll be it and because tiff my wife is a gamer she we usually have all or some of the current generation game consoles in the house ready to go and i just i hardly ever touch them because i i just don't care that much
Marco:
The Switch has changed that.
Marco:
It's really good.
Marco:
And this isn't about a console.
Marco:
This is about the games.
Marco:
Nintendo was in such a bad place with the Wii U, they were in such a rush to get this out, that they didn't have time to mess it up with getting too far up their own butts about what they were going to do about some gimmicky hardware thing.
Marco:
They just made really great games for a really convenient system.
Marco:
And there's no other gimmicks about it.
Marco:
And it's great.
Marco:
It's just so, so great.
Marco:
And in particular, like...
Marco:
Tiff and Adam really enjoyed Zelda together.
Marco:
I really enjoyed Mario Kart and Sonic Mania.
Marco:
We all have been really enjoying Stardew Valley.
Marco:
And there's so many more games.
Marco:
I've bought games on it that I haven't even run yet.
Marco:
Just because I heard they were so great, I bought them thinking I'd play them.
Marco:
And I haven't even had time because I haven't been too busy playing all the other great games.
Marco:
There's a surplus of amazing games for it.
Marco:
uh that we haven't even had a chance to play all of yet that's how many great games there are and so to have all this in a you know in a mid-priced system that's very practical to have in your life because it can be both portable and stationary although honestly i don't like the portable version of it because the screen is too small and and the controllers are too skinny and and they give my problems with the portable thing you don't say yeah and the input device surprisingly yeah
Casey:
Marco, the joke's right themselves, my friend.
Marco:
Honestly, I do wish I had an HDMI port.
Casey:
Oh, God.
Casey:
Good grief.
Casey:
I need to start a holiday party.
Marco:
You should.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Just playing it as a home console for me.
Marco:
It's just great.
Marco:
It's such a great system with such great games.
Marco:
I am happier with the Switch than any video game or video game system at least in the last decade.
Casey:
Did you like your Sega consoles more?
Marco:
Yeah, but those were more than, you know, my one Sega console, my Genesis.
Marco:
But that was a long time ago when Genesis was current, which was in like 1993.
Marco:
Yeah, totally.
Casey:
No, no, I'm not trying to mess with you.
Casey:
I'm saying, you know, to the best that you can remember how you felt when you were 11, do you feel like the Genesis provided you more joy than the Switch does?
Casey:
And obviously that's a tough question because you're a very different person now, but
Casey:
If you had to choose only one in their current time, so I'm not asking you to choose the Genesis over the Switch today, what do you think you would do?
Marco:
I need another year with the Switch to really know.
Marco:
It's a little too early.
Marco:
So far, I think they're probably pretty close to each other in that way.
Marco:
It's just so damn good.
Marco:
And honestly, I've had an Xbox, like the first one, I was going to say an Xbox One, but that's something else now.
Marco:
So I had the first Xbox, which I got pre-modded with a mod chip so I could rip games onto the hard drive and install XBMC, which is now Plex, basically.
Marco:
and stuff like that.
Marco:
That's kind of where it all started.
Marco:
I had that.
Marco:
I had a Wii.
Marco:
The first Wii, not the stupid U. Sorry, John.
Marco:
I had the PS3 and 4 and a 360.
Marco:
I had a lot of fun with some of those, but none of them were as good as the Switch, just game library-wise.
Marco:
I'm very much enjoying this, and
Marco:
Anybody who used to have fun with games but has maybe fallen out of it like I did, give the Switch a try.
Marco:
It's really fun.
John:
john i totally forgot about the switch but if i had remembered it i wouldn't have listed the switch for actually for a lot of the same reasons marco mentioned because i never use it in portable mode if i can help it because it's not ergonomically it doesn't fit me ergonomically i never take the little joy cons off of it i just leave it on there i only use the pro controller with it i only hook it up to tv uh and
John:
in that you know in that way as a console i don't think it's uh like it's not it's not my favorite i wouldn't have listed it as a thing that i'm thankful for because i think the the the pro controller is not as good as the gamecube controller or maybe not even as good as the wii u pro controller and the fact that it's this weird portable thing that i have to put into a dock and hook up to my tv and it just doesn't you know
John:
It's compromised by the fact that it needs to be portable.
John:
I wish it was more powerful, blah, blah, blah.
John:
All my complaints, typical complaints about Nintendo consoles.
John:
So if I listed something, what I would have listed is the games.
John:
And specifically, I would have listed Zelda, which for me is head and shoulders.
John:
Like the other games are great.
John:
Like I love them.
John:
But Zelda is the most important Nintendo franchise for me.
John:
And this was a very significant Zelda game, breaking with the past in lots of very interesting ways.
John:
And I just thought it was an amazing game.
John:
Probably still not my favorite Zelda.
John:
A lot of people ask me that.
John:
As much as I love it and does so many things so much better than every other Zelda has ever done them, it falls down in a couple areas.
John:
But that's what I would have listed.
John:
I would have listed Breath of the Wild as the thing that I should have been thankful for.
John:
It just slipped my mind.
Casey:
It's funny to me that you guys are lamenting the portability of it because, holy smokes, almost all of the fun I've had with the Switch is because I've been in some sort of group setting.
Casey:
Some of the most fun times I've had with the Switch has been the handful of times that we played Mario Kart together at work, and we'd all gather around...
Casey:
like, a few tables or something and sit there and play Mario Kart against each other.
Casey:
And it's like, you know, all the great parts about a LAN party back in the day where you can shout and yell at your friends and, you know, and call them terrible names and whatnot because they're sitting right next to you.
Casey:
And you can do all of that without having to, and here I'm telling you how old I am, without having to lug, like, a 50-pound CRT to your friend's house.
Casey:
You know, so...
Casey:
So I'm not trying to say you're wrong.
Casey:
I'm really honestly not.
Casey:
I'm just saying I'm surprised that you guys don't really favor the portability at all.
Casey:
Because that is, like I said to you about my family and certainly at work from time to time.
Casey:
And even at WWDC, I organized on Beacon, I think it was.
Casey:
I organized like a little get together for playing Mario Kart.
Casey:
And to me, those are such fun times.
Casey:
And they really define the switch to me.
Casey:
in a way that no other console I've had has really worked.
Casey:
And everyone's allowed their own experience.
Casey:
I'm just super surprised.
Marco:
I mean, I would love the portability to work out better and more often for me.
Marco:
And I occasionally... I'll take it to... If I know I'm going to be sitting in a doctor's office waiting room for a little while, I'll take it sometimes.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
Using the Joy-Cons is just very uncomfortable for me.
Marco:
They're clearly made for much smaller hands.
Marco:
It's probably made for children and teenagers to be able to comfortably use.
Marco:
It hurts my hands to use it for more than a few minutes.
Marco:
Because I'm also accustomed to playing on a giant, nice OLED TV with speakers and everything sitting on the couch with the Pro Controller...
Marco:
The portable experience, the screen is noticeably crappier.
Marco:
I don't get my wonderful OLED black levels.
Marco:
It's a very, very small screen for old people like me and John and people with broken eyes like you.
Marco:
It's a really small screen compared to most modern TVs.
Marco:
And so, to me, it just doesn't work as well in portable mode.
Marco:
And I'm probably the only person in the world... Normally, Nintendo's portable consoles, they eventually get a mini version, their new versions.
Marco:
I'm the only person, I think, in the world wanting the Switch XL to actually basically get really fat.
Like...
Marco:
I want a Switch that doesn't have detachable controllers, that basically has controller wings that are approximately the shape of a pro controller.
Marco:
And the whole thing gets bigger to accommodate a screen closer to maybe an iPad mini size.
Marco:
That's what I would like.
Marco:
I don't think they're going to make that because no one else wants that except me and maybe John.
Marco:
But ultimately, the portability, it's too small to be comfortable for me.
John:
i don't want it to be thicker i want it to be a game cube okay i want it to be a non-portable console without a screen on it that's like four times as powerful uh but again that's not what people want yeah the main appeal of the switch to be clear for most people is exactly what you said casey hey it's the same game portable and on your tv and it works great in both places that is the main appeal but marco and i just happen to be
John:
oddballs both in the camp where we want to play it sitting on our couches and that's that and we're happy with it there like it's not like i have you know my complaint is that it's not powerful enough and it's compromised by that but you know i enjoy the games like uh breath of the wild was an amazing game especially given the power of the console
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Eero.
Marco:
Eero solves both of these problems.
Marco:
So number one, they know, as we do, that no matter how many antennas you stick on top of a router, it's never going to cover your entire house perfectly.
Marco:
You need multiple access points.
Marco:
You need to be broadcasting that signal from multiple different little boxes around your house, not just one somewhere like in the basement or in the middle somewhere.
Marco:
Eero solves that problem perfectly by having multiple radios.
Marco:
So they have two different models.
Marco:
They have the standard Eero base station.
Marco:
And this is now the second generation one.
Marco:
It has a much faster radio, much faster throughput.
Marco:
And they also now have these little beacons that you can plug in at different points around the house to help broadcast more Wi-Fi signal.
Marco:
The beacons are these little flush things.
Marco:
They sit flush against the wall just in an outlet.
Marco:
It looks kind of like a big nightlight.
Marco:
And in fact, they even built in a nightlight just to help you make it a little more useful.
Marco:
And you can plug them in anywhere.
Marco:
Everything is now faster, longer range, better performance.
Marco:
So they solve the coverage problem better than anything else I've seen.
Marco:
And then they also solve the ease of use problem also better than anything else I've ever seen.
Marco:
This is one area, you know, if you're a nerd and you've used multiple access point Wi-Fi systems before like I have,
Marco:
You will be shocked how easy Eero is to set up.
Marco:
It is really quite something else to see.
Marco:
And it's so easy, I can easily recommend it to any kind of non-technical friends or family you might have if you need to help them with their Wi-Fi this year.
Marco:
Check out Eero.
Marco:
You will be shocked how easy it is.
Marco:
And the performance is wonderful, especially with this new second-generation hardware.
Marco:
The new beacons are small, discreet, and very, very flexible.
Marco:
You can put them pretty much anywhere, and they have the nightlight built in.
Marco:
Check it out today.
Marco:
Go to Eero.com, that's E-E-R-O.com, and use promo code ATP at checkout to get free overnight shipping to the U.S.
Marco:
and Canada.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Eero for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So we should move on to Ask ATP, and conveniently, we have a Switch-related question.
Casey:
StarSusumi writes, have you guys played Super Mario Odyssey?
Casey:
How do you think about it?
Casey:
You know, what do you think of it?
Casey:
And I have not, and that's in no small part because I haven't really touched my Switch very much recently.
Casey:
But let's start with Marco.
Casey:
Marco, have you played Super Mario Odyssey?
Marco:
Not yet.
Marco:
I'm still spending all my Switch time in Stardew Valley.
Marco:
And behind that, I also have the Mario Rabbids game.
Marco:
And I still have to finish the last few zones of Sonic Mania.
Marco:
There's so many games.
Marco:
I can't keep up.
Marco:
But I'm also a little bit concerned that I might not like Mario Odyssey because people are saying it's almost like a cross between Mario 64 and Zelda.
Marco:
that is not true okay because i i didn't i never liked the way the mario series went 3d very much like it was really cool at the time like for mario 64 but like i always like the 2d ones a lot better and zelda's not really my kind of game like the kind of you know big adventure rpg kind of thing so john should i be playing mario odyssey
John:
if you don't like 3d marios super mario is a 3d mario i like 3d mario so i like a super mario odyssey uh and in the pantheon of 3d marios i don't know where i'd put it like i really liked galaxy as well galaxy was very different and had i think more of a twist on the typical mario formula even if it was more constrained by like being on little planets and doing stuff and
John:
Mario Odyssey is a little bit more of a return to conventions of, well, it's just regular 3D Mario with a little bit more open world, but Mario Odyssey is so unashamedly wacky.
John:
In some ways, I feel like it's sillier than I want it to be.
John:
Like, I take Mario more seriously than this game does.
John:
But in other ways, it's highlighted to me exactly how much more I like some of the other franchises.
John:
Like, Zelda is my number one, and I think even Metroid has been elevated to potentially the other franchise that I'm more excited about.
John:
But as far as Mario games go, if you like 3D Mario games, you'll like this.
John:
For Marco, maybe something that will keep him interested in is they do have tons of nostalgic pandering to the people who are fans of 2D Mario, but I don't...
John:
If you really don't like 3D Mario, I'm not sure that'll be enough to keep you interesting.
John:
But I would say just like, honestly, play it and let Adam play it and just watch.
John:
It's just such a fun game.
John:
It's so unashamed to say there's no rhyme or reason why this is here.
John:
It's just because it's fun.
John:
And there's lots of fun things to do and explore and play with.
John:
And you can kind of go at your own pace.
John:
And it's very, very gentle.
John:
And it's not particularly punishing, except for a couple of checkpoints that are a little...
John:
farther back than I would want them to be.
John:
So I say you should definitely get it because I think your family as a whole will have fun with it.
John:
Whether you will spend more than a little time with it, I don't know.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
MZ writes, do you use robotic vacuum cleaners?
Casey:
If yes, what brands and use cases work for you?
Casey:
And if not, why?
Casey:
I have never owned a Roomba or anything like it.
Casey:
I would guess that if I were to get one, I would get a Roomba because marketing.
Casey:
But I've never used one and have never really felt a need for it.
Marco:
I have experience with Roombas here and there, but not a lot of experience, and none of it that was so compelling that I thought I must have one of these.
Marco:
I don't know if they've gotten better meaningfully since then, but the limitations they had back then were basically like...
Marco:
They wouldn't really get everywhere.
Marco:
They wouldn't really be able to go on all surfaces and rugs and everything.
Marco:
They would occasionally get stuck and complain in some kind of happy song.
Marco:
I know at least the newer ones will go back to their base and charge themselves, which is nice.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It just seems like a lot of trouble and noise and expense and hassle and one more electronic thing to manage to solve a problem partway.
Marco:
And it's like, well, you still have to vacuum if it can't do the whole house effectively.
Marco:
So I'm not it.
Marco:
Maybe these things are better than I remember them or maybe they've gotten better.
Marco:
But my limited experience with them is not compelling.
John:
i've never had one and i've never thought about buying one just because it just doesn't seem like it can do the job i mean you can see how big they are like these little pucks uh i've got more crap in my house than fits in there i see how much is you know in the clear the clear bagless container of my thing when i actually vacuum you know the entire first floor of the house that's not gonna fit in a roomba roomba can't empty itself and so yeah it just seems like i mean it looks like a fun novelty and if you have them just sort of
John:
let you go longer between actually vacuuming i can see that or if you have a house where you don't have pets that are going to attack it and or feel attacked by it which is another factor in having an autonomous thing wandering around your house but nope never tried i put this question in there just because i thought maybe marco might have it now that he's got all his little like a light switch clappers and all his other home automation stuff but i guess clappers still yeah you're still resisting the uh the the robot invasion of our homes clap on
John:
All right.
Casey:
And finally, this is for Marco.
Casey:
Eric New writes, what fraction of total audio gets cut by Marco for the finished podcast?
Casey:
So I will say to set you up, Marco, that we record at about nine o'clock in the evening, our time and typically end between 1145 and midnight.
Casey:
And we are recording pretty much that entire time.
Casey:
Now, that may or may not be us.
Casey:
acting like we're recording if that makes any sense like we may be kind of a little more casual and not really expect some of that to go in the show but you know i give marco an mp3 each and every week that's roughly two and a half to three hours long and you know the released episodes are anywhere from an hour and a half to like two hours usually yeah it's more like 145 to 215 yeah but that's the simple answer so marco what's the real answer
Marco:
Basically, if you figure out from what you said, we do usually record for about two and a half hours.
Marco:
The finished episode has six minutes of ads, plus the theme song, which is about a minute long.
Marco:
So you figure, I have about seven minutes of added content that isn't part of the live recording.
Marco:
And a two and a half hour show.
Marco:
So that's about two hours and 37 minutes of total content before cutting.
Marco:
And then the show is about, you know, 145 to 215.
Marco:
So you figure I'm cutting, you know, maybe 20 minutes.
Marco:
Now, that's not like an even 20 or 30 minutes throughout the show that I'm cutting.
Marco:
It's mostly like cutting the first like two or three minutes of the call where we're just like setting up, you know, hey, is John here?
Marco:
You know, is Casey here?
Marco:
You know, setting up like this crap that nobody ever wants to hear about.
Marco:
And then after we have decided we're done recording, we're talking about, oh, let's pick some titles and then maybe tell the live listeners, oh, next week we're going to, you know, we're going to be recording on Tuesday instead of Wednesday.
Marco:
So like, you know, bookkeeping at the end of the show, we're just kind of like,
Marco:
You know, kind of like casual talking at the end, but it's not good enough to be in the show.
Marco:
That's what most of the cutting actually is, is the beginning and the end.
Marco:
And don't worry, you're not missing much.
Marco:
I cut it because it isn't very interesting.
Marco:
So, you know, the release version of the show contains almost everything that we actually say that is actually part of the show as we hear it live.
John:
Almost everything that's in the show is in the show is what he's trying to say.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
And if it's a show where John talks a lot, a lot less is cut.
Marco:
If it's a show where I talk a lot, a lot more is cut.
Casey:
You can always fix it in post, right?
Casey:
I do.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
So there was a little bit of a kerfuffle earlier this week.
Casey:
We're recording this on Wednesday evening.
Casey:
And there has just been released a patch for a rather unique bug that has sprung up in High Sierra.
Casey:
And I never actually tried it, but my understanding is if you go into system preferences and I think into security and then you click the lock and hit enter and then enter the username root and an empty password and try that.
Casey:
And, you know, you might have to do the stance a little bit, but eventually you will get to the point that suddenly you have set the root password on that High Sierra installed Macintosh.
Casey:
And that is a problem because if you're not familiar, root is basically the god account on any Unix-based system.
Casey:
And so if you can finagle root access to a computer, then a Mac, I should say, then you basically can do anything you want.
Casey:
And this is a bit of an issue.
Casey:
And there are a little bit, you know, I think most people have a little bit of a problem with the way in which it was publicized, which was via tweet, which is not terribly responsible for
Casey:
But we don't know what happened before then.
Casey:
Maybe it was responsibly disclosed.
Casey:
Somebody then eventually had discovered that about two weeks ago, this was posted in Apple's own developer forums, which is kind of amusing.
Casey:
And Patrick Wardle has done a deep dive into why they think this happened.
Casey:
But that's kind of the setup.
Casey:
John, I presume you particularly have many thoughts on this.
Casey:
So do you want to kind of fill in some of the blanks here?
John:
By the time you hear this, this will have all been solved for everybody because there was about a day, day and a half between when this was widely publicized on Twitter and when Apple put out the fix for it.
John:
And not only has Apple put out the fix, like if you have High Sierra and you go to Software Update, you can get the fix, but they will start, they say, starting later today in their message, which means they probably already have done this.
John:
they're going to forcibly push this fix out to everybody running high sierra like you won't have to run software update you won't have to check for updates you won't have to click a button it will just go out on and you don't need to reboot either it will just go out onto your computer um and that's a mechanism that apple has used a couple times in the past i think the only one that
John:
I could remember, and I think the only one that Jason Snell could remember as well, was the NTP bug with the time server thing that they also pushed out.
John:
But I'm assuming it's either the same exact or very similar to the mechanism they have for pushing out updates to malware, which they also do without you having to do anything behind the scenes without any other updates.
John:
Like, they'll push the malware updates.
John:
And I have no idea when those are happening, because who would know?
John:
I guess you could just diff the malware definition file and see when it changes.
John:
But...
John:
But anyway, uh, if you're listening to this now and you're using a Mac with high Sierra and you're connected to the network, this problem should be solved for you.
John:
Unless of course the fix causes problems, which for some people it has.
John:
Apparently it's possible for the fix itself, which was rolled out in a day to cause problems with doing file sharing.
John:
And there's a fix for the fix, which Apple also has a tech note for that.
John:
You can run some other command and that will fix their fix.
John:
Uh, which is why usually fixes don't come out 24 hours after a problem was discovered.
John:
Um,
John:
The root cause stuff is interesting.
John:
It's difficult.
John:
The thing that Patrick Ward wrote up because he doesn't have the source code to all parts of the operating system.
John:
So he's like disassembling it, which is a heroic effort to disassemble often without any symbols to try to figure out what the heck is going on.
John:
Has he updated that thread?
John:
I don't know.
John:
But anyway, what it looked like when I read this post earlier today was that it was the programmer making the classic mistake of getting confused about what the return value means from a function.
John:
There's multiple schools of thought and multiple cultures on what return values mean in terms of what indicates success or failure.
John:
The sort of Unix system call kind of way is zero indicates success and anything that's not zero indicates some form of failure.
John:
But there are also whole other swaths of whole other APIs in other domains where a true value or one or a Boolean or something like that indicates success and a false value or zero or undefined or whatever means failure.
John:
And those conventions are opposite of each other.
John:
And it can be very easy when you're programming to get confused about which is which, especially if you're in some kind of domain of like your own code that you wrote where you're not sure what convention it's following or whatever.
John:
And if you get that return value wrong, then you may proceed as if something has failed when it succeeded or vice versa.
John:
And you can read the root cause.
John:
It's a series of things that stem from that where...
John:
uh you know max come by default with the root account disabled uh and this thing accidentally enables it and it enables it and sets the password to whatever you wrote in the text box which is an empty string and then from that point on if you try to log in again with the empty string it succeeds the second time because the first time it enabled both enabled the account and set it to empty string uh it's just
John:
you know typical with these type of bugs lots of things have to go wrong for it to uh to fall down um but i'm assuming the fix was fairly straightforward but apparently not because it borked everyone's file sharing who knows maybe it had to do with applying the fix without restarting which is not something that normally happens with security updates um or maybe it does i don't know i don't keep track of like when you get a security update and a software update does it require a restart all the time
John:
not all the time yeah maybe not for all them i guess it depends on what it's patching if you can just kill a patch a demon and then kill it and it'll auto restart itself um anyway this is a bad one this is pretty much as bad as a local exploit can get and it was it was a local exploit that was remoteable because if you have screen sharing enabled
John:
like the local exploit suddenly becomes a remote because the exploit itself is that it allows you to log in uh as root with no password if the root account is disabled i also believe that the fix they push out disables the root account again and maybe they had to do that just because they're afraid everyone enabled it you know by the way the workaround for this was oh enable the root account and actually set a
John:
which is why i thought i'm totally invulnerable not the least of which because i'm running el capitan but anyway i always i always enable the root account on all my macs and i always set a password on it you know because i use the root account to do unicy stuff so even though macs ship with the root account disabled one of the first things i do is enable it and set a password and do all that stuff
John:
So I thought I didn't have to worry about it, but I actually checked my wife's computer, and for whatever reason, I guess it's because when we got it as a new computer, I never did any of the Unicey stuff over on it.
John:
She did have the root account disabled.
John:
Anyway, this update, the fix, will re-disable the root account.
John:
So if you don't want the root account disabled, re-enable it, set a strong password on it, and you'll be back.
John:
so yeah this is a bad one uh and because this is a fairly terrible error and a one day 24 hour turnaround time on the fix and all sorts of other things lots of people are attaching various levels of significance to this uh there's a lot of threads going around revisiting you know apple's quality control has is it going downhill um
John:
This never would have happened if Steve was alive, blah, blah, blah.
John:
I guess we can talk about that in a little bit.
John:
But the one thing that's brought to mind immediately, and I didn't spend much time Googling this, so maybe I'm misremembering it, but almost this exact same bug was on the Mac back in the days when Steve was running the show.
John:
And I believe it was like on the lock screen, like on your laptop or your desktop, where you get the screen lock and it says, enter your password to unlock the screen.
John:
And all you needed to do was type a whole bunch of characters in the password field until it, like, overflowed some buffer and caused the screensaver to crash and unlock the screen for you.
John:
And I think you could even hold down the return key, and it would still do the same thing.
John:
I forget.
John:
I may be misremembering.
John:
Maybe people can tell me if I'm misremembering.
John:
Yeah.
John:
That's the thing with security.
John:
It doesn't matter how silly the mistake is, silly the programming mistake is.
John:
If it's in just the wrong place, your whole security edifice falls down.
John:
So I actually don't think this security error is...
John:
indicative of any larger problem it is just one more like this specific one i think it is just one more uh pebble on the pile and what we should be doing is counting the pebbles not saying this one pebble because this one pebble exists it means therefore this is the world's biggest problem the real problem is how many pebbles are there and is the pile getting smaller or bigger over time that's what people need to talk about and i suppose this pebble is a little bit bigger than normal but it was also fixed much quicker than normal and it's kind of understandable i don't know anyway uh
John:
So the question that most piqued my interest that I saw come up about this, I forget if it was in a Slack or on Twitter or whatever, but I want to ask you two to see what you think is someone was asking, is this a fireable offense?
John:
And if so, who should be fired?
Marco:
I mean, if it was put there intentionally, sure.
Marco:
If it was like the NSA paid some engineer to go inject a weakness, sure.
Marco:
But that was probably not what happened here.
Marco:
The nature of this bug, from little we know about it, from mostly from that disassembly, it doesn't seem like...
Marco:
It's that kind of bug.
Marco:
Unless it was intentionally done, I would say, no, this is not a fireball offense.
Marco:
This is software.
Marco:
People make mistakes all the time.
Marco:
This really honestly could have been a single line of code mistake.
Marco:
And if that's all it was, then it's just part of doing the job.
Marco:
And for the record, John, I'm with you.
Marco:
People look at me to amplify a lot of Apple rage these days because I do that sometimes, but...
Marco:
I don't think this is alone in isolation.
Marco:
I'm not freaked out about this.
Marco:
Like, yeah, it's a bad security bug.
Marco:
It got fixed.
Marco:
That's what's supposed to happen.
Marco:
Any OS, even iOS, where Apple puts all their resources, any OS has occasional security bugs of this magnitude.
Marco:
And if it's being properly cared for, they get fixed.
Marco:
Simple as that.
Marco:
That's the nature of very, very complex modern software.
Marco:
You're going to have problems.
Marco:
As long as they get fixed, everything's working as it always does.
Marco:
So this particular bug I don't think is a sign of anything big.
Marco:
I think it was handled as well as it could have been handled, although it is a little worrying how long ago people were talking about it on the forums and nobody seemed to notice.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
you know security bugs like that like who knows if the right people saw that either like people report random bugs all the time and random odd behavior on forums all the time but people also report so much garbage on forums that nobody can keep up with everything that's posted and who knows like if somebody's describing you know like on the forums like if you read the post that were allegedly describing this problem like
Marco:
If you're some Apple employee who's just skimming through these posts, like, you don't know what the conditions were on that person's machine.
Marco:
Like, maybe something weird was going on with their software in some other way.
Marco:
Like, maybe it wasn't your bug, necessarily.
Marco:
So, like, it's hard to know when you're just skimming through forum posts what people are actually talking about.
Marco:
And if this is a real issue that you need to worry about, if it's your bug, or if it's just, like, some weird thing that they did or that they're recalling badly or describing badly, you know.
Marco:
So, like...
Marco:
I don't see anything about this bug that is cause for massive concern on any kind of real scale.
Marco:
I see lots of other ways for concern for Apple, but this is not one of those things.
Marco:
And to go back to the actual question you asked, once again to summarize, no, as long as this was done unintentionally, this is not a fireable offense.
Marco:
This is just developing software.
Casey:
Yeah, I agree.
Casey:
I don't think this is fireable unless it was a deliberate backdoor.
Casey:
And I don't think that it was.
Casey:
And I've seen some people that are really up in arms about the fact that on Apple's own dev forums, this was reported and nobody noticed.
Casey:
I was...
Casey:
You know, cracking wise about it earlier, but the reality of the situation is like, look at radar.
Casey:
So as much as I also crack wise and lament radar, that is a a never ending just tidal wave of new information that Apple as a company needs to sort through.
Casey:
And if you look at radar, which has a fairly high, in my opinion, cost of entry in terms of like, who's really going to file a radar?
Casey:
Not any normal schmo.
Casey:
It's going to be a super nerd developer who actually is silly enough to spend the time doing it.
Casey:
So think about this just insurmountable wave of information coming off radar, which is Apple's internal bug, well, internal slash external bug reporting tool.
Casey:
And then amplify that like by several orders of magnitude.
Casey:
And that's the, that's a forum.
Casey:
So there is no way that anyone, like I can't imagine anyone's cruising the forums looking for reports of security vulnerabilities.
Casey:
Like that's just not a thing.
Casey:
So as much as I joke about how it was reported on Apple's own forums and they should have noticed like, no, they shouldn't have.
Casey:
And yeah,
Casey:
And they've turned around a fix as quickly as possible.
Casey:
I wish they QA'd the fix a little better because up until a few minutes ago when one of you mentioned it, I didn't even realize the fix needed a fix.
Casey:
But, you know, they're trying to do right by everyone and trying to get this right as quickly as possible.
Casey:
And I think...
Casey:
To my eyes, and maybe it's easy for me to say this because I'm hugely biased as a developer, but I feel like, yes, the root cause of this was a developer making an oops, but this to me is more... I'm more alarmed by the QA process than I am the developer that made the oops, because this seems like the sort of thing that...
Casey:
I feel like it should have been caught in quality assurance, and clearly it wasn't.
Casey:
And that's the thing that scares me a little bit.
Casey:
But somewhere, I guess they made a statement to several outlets, including iMore, and I don't have it in front of me, but they basically said that they're going to provide a write-up of what happened.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Do you know what I'm talking about?
Casey:
They said they were going to do basically a post-mortem and talk about it, if I'm not mistaken.
Yeah.
John:
I have the Apple statement in the notes, but it doesn't say anything about that.
Casey:
We are auditing our development process to help prevent this from happening ever again.
Casey:
I could have sworn they said they were going to talk about it publicly, but I guess not.
Marco:
I think they just did.
Marco:
That's probably the extent that we were going to hear about it.
Marco:
But honestly, again, unless it was intentional sabotage,
Marco:
I don't think the cause for this is going to be very interesting.
Marco:
It's just, yeah, somebody messed up.
Marco:
Like the go-to-fail bug from a couple years back, that was most likely a random copy and paste, or a bad merge.
Marco:
It's possible that somebody maliciously put that there for NSA purposes to make it look like an accidental bug.
Marco:
That's possible, but...
Marco:
that's a lot less likely than just somebody messed up.
Marco:
Because it's software.
Marco:
People mess up all the time.
Marco:
That's why you have to have systems in place to be able to update things and patch things.
Marco:
Because you know it's going to happen.
Marco:
And no matter how many tests Casey writes for you, it's still going to be... You're still going to have bugs.
John:
well done i asked about the i asked about the firing thing just because it was a sentiment that i saw a lot of people discussing and it seemed to me that a lot of discussions centered around uh people arguing about who should be fired like oh the programmer made the mistake should be fired and no the quality assurance should be fired no actually neither one of those people should be hard it should be their manager no it should be tim cook like you know who is ultimately responsible and how do we make people accountable uh and it was you know kind of a uh a test last trick question for you two when you both
John:
got what I think is the right answer.
John:
But you both write software, so I think that's why.
John:
But when people are angry about something, you don't have to be particularly technically savvy or into the details of computers or a program or anything to understand how bad this bug is.
John:
Because it's just...
John:
it seems like one of those bugs that if we saw it in a movie we'd be like that's ridiculous that's so fake couldn't they come up with a with a better looking bug it's like just comically you know just like just hit return a second time and now you're in it's almost as bad as when like when windows 98 would have a login password up on screen you just hit cancel and it just proceeded with the login
John:
yeah someone showed the the old video of the windows 95 one where you could hit the question mark to get the help screen and eventually navigate your way to like a uh to the open save dialog box and just open my computer with like a right click there's lots of things like at least that one was a little bit complicated but yeah this one is ridiculous but um but for all situations again excluding intentional sabotage which is i think the only reason that anybody anywhere in apple should be fired for this is intentional sabotage um or gross negligence
John:
I think intentional, based on what I've seen of this specific bug of what it looks like from the disassembly of the code, it's not gross negligence.
John:
It looks like a common mistake, easy to get.
John:
Even the QA people shouldn't be fired.
John:
Craig Federighi shouldn't be fired.
John:
No one should be fired for this.
John:
And the reason no one should be fired for this is it's not just about software.
John:
I mean, it's something you experience in software just because software is a realm where even the very best practitioners make mistakes all the time.
John:
That is the nature of the work, right?
Yeah.
John:
which is often the source of ridicule but if you're an actual programmer you understand why but put programming aside um in any sort of group effort any environment where someone would be fired for an honest mistake like this regardless of the impact uh is not an environment that that it's not a safe environment for people to grow and improve their skills like you have it's a it is a hostile organization you should never want to work for someplace that would fire you because you made an honest mistake in a book like
John:
That's not your fault, and it's not like the quality assurance people's fault.
John:
Now, if you make a series of these errors, eventually, yes, executives should be fired or changed or whatever, but an individual contributor in any part of the organization who makes an honest mistake shouldn't be fired for that honest mistake just because that one happened to be in just the wrong place.
John:
That's not an environment that makes people feel safe to learn and grow, and it's the organization's job for
John:
to make sure people in roles that are suited to their skills and that they're supported and that they're, you know, that they have the correct training and knowledge to get up to the next level, do the next thing.
John:
Like that's the organization problem.
John:
That's not the individual's problem.
John:
So in any group of people, if you're in an environment where you're like, we're going to be the best because if anybody makes any mistake, they're going to immediately be fired.
John:
Your team, you will fire everyone on your team and you will only have the worst meanest employees who are only good at carefully not making mistakes and you will have crap people.
John:
So like I,
John:
I don't think it entered anyone's mind at Apple that someone was going to get fired over this, even in the worst moments of anger.
John:
Again, unless it was sabotage.
John:
And unless it was like, this is the fifth one of these.
John:
And even then, if it's the fifth one, you should have rotated the person out of that position after the first or second one instead of leaving them there.
John:
So then maybe some manager should get fired.
John:
But this is not a...
John:
long series of these terrible security errors or anything like that um so no i don't think anyone should be fired for this um and yeah i skipped over the the developer forum thing uh that's that's kind of a fun one because apple's developer forums if you don't hang out there if you don't hang out there you might uh most likely
John:
hit the developer forums when you do a Google search for something, and then you find all the other poor souls posting to the developer forums with the exact same problem that you have.
John:
But my understanding of the developer forums, which may be outdated, but I think it's still current, is that it's a place for Apple's customers to go
John:
and talk to each other about their stuff it's not the genius bar on the web like it's not a place where you go to ask apple for help although apple people are sometimes there and may sometimes be helpful that's not like a support channel for you to get your thing fixed by apple it's for apple's customers to talk to each other so it's not like apple someone from apple it's not their job to read every single post there and what it also means is that my impression is a lot of the people who are posting there are
John:
People who are not that into computers as a hobby, they just want their damn computer to work.
John:
And they end up going to Google and trying to say, can my computer work?
John:
Where's someplace I can talk about this?
John:
And they end up landing at the Apple developer forums.
John:
You can go there from the Apple website, find your way there or whatever.
John:
It's a venue for...
John:
people of all kinds to talk about their computers it is not a super nerd hangout right which means that you get a lot of people with very basic problems and other people trying to help them who may not know all the intricate details and if i have to admit if i had read that threat and saw someone suggesting here's what you can do to fix you know someone was locked out of their computer i'm locked myself out of my computer
John:
uh how do i get in and fix it and like you'd see a whole bunch of people suggesting things and like one of them would be like the correct solution of like if you really have forgotten your password you can reset it in single user mode and blah blah blah but there'll be a bunch of other people suggesting other things and if i had read that thing of like oh just go here this thing hit the lock icon type root and hit return you get right now i would have thought
John:
That's not going to work.
John:
Like, it may be it worked for you because you have some weird, but like, it just, it's obviously someone who's confused and they're trying to be helpful.
John:
But yeah, I wouldn't, honestly, I wouldn't take it seriously because there's so much crap.
John:
So many people other, like, you know, they're not, they're just being nice people.
John:
Like, here's something, try this.
John:
Have you tried that?
John:
This worked for me once, right?
John:
And I, if I had read that, I would never in a million years have thought that's actually legit.
John:
Like that will actually work.
John:
I wouldn't even have tried it.
John:
I wouldn't even thought about trying it.
John:
And I bet if an Apple employee read it, they'd be like, ha ha.
John:
Yeah.
John:
If only that worked.
John:
Like you just type root in a return with no password.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Nice try.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Turns out in this one case, that actually did work.
John:
And that's terrifying slightly.
John:
And the real scary thing is the person who wrote that up, Gruber just posted a thing about it.
John:
Because the thread continued from there saying, where did you hear about this?
John:
He's like, oh, I heard it in some other forum.
John:
So who knows how long this exploit has been out there in whatever dark corners of the internet that people have known that you could do this.
John:
in high sierra um and it's only because certainly weeks later but possibly even longer who knows maybe this has been there since the original release of high sierra maybe it's been there since the betas and people have known about it only because it got twitter publicity like a day or two ago did apple rush to fix it and and you know i don't really blame apple for that because like i said if i had read this in the forums i wouldn't have believed either it just sounds it just sounds ridiculous
Marco:
Yeah, and to add to your discrediting of needing to take forums seriously, whenever I search for a problem with my Apple products or software, I almost always come across a forum link or two to Apple support forums.
Marco:
And I don't think I can come up with any better example of a worse ratio of usefulness to times I see the page that is non-zero.
Marco:
The results are usually so useless and terrible.
Marco:
Because it is just random, semi-lost, under-informed people trying to help each other without any help from Apple.
Marco:
I think Yahoo Answers has a higher hit rate for me than Apple Support Forums.
John:
Oh, that's not fair.
John:
It's not as bad as Yahoo Answers.
John:
I've really come up with Apple Support Forum things.
John:
And here's what I get from Apple Support Forums.
John:
One, I find out if my problem is common.
John:
Because if there are a million repeated threads with people having the same exact problem, I am reassured in some way.
John:
They're like, okay, now I know.
John:
If I don't find any matches in the Apple support forums, I'm like, I probably have bad hardware or something like that.
John:
But if a million people say that they have this problem, that tells me something.
John:
And two, I get to see the weeks or months of people suggesting basically everything under the sun.
John:
Have you tried resetting your PRAM?
John:
Have you rebuilt your desktop?
John:
Have you tried hopping on one foot?
Marco:
Every solution that has ever worked for any problem gets suggested for all problems.
John:
Right.
John:
And people reply, I tried that and it didn't help me.
John:
I tried that and it didn't help me.
John:
And very often there is one that says, I did that and it finally worked.
John:
And at least that gives me, it lets me eliminate stuff that I know won't work because I see everyone keep trying this and they're not working.
John:
And then if something does work for one person, sometimes I can back solve to figure out what really solved the problem because obviously that thing didn't because someone would be like, well, I did that exact same thing and I didn't solve it.
John:
Like, it is super noisy.
John:
But here's the thing that has over Yahoo answers.
John:
Fewer trolls.
John:
Right.
John:
And much more specifically relevant to my needs.
John:
So I think there is the signal to noise is not great, but there is value to be had there.
John:
Now, granted, if you find yourself in the Apple forums, you are probably desperate.
John:
You're probably that's kind of the bottom of the barrel.
John:
But I think all those people who spend all that time talking back to it and forth to each other to try to solve problems, because every once in a while, just looking at the shape that they've traced around this problem of all the things they've tried, I can find my way to a solution that actually works for me.
Marco:
So user Raxelbroff in the chat said, Apple support forums.
Marco:
The problem you are experiencing doesn't exist, slash, that's the way it's supposed to work, slash, here's a copy-pasted solution that indicates I didn't read your problem.
Marco:
That is a fantastic summary.
Marco:
That is true.
John:
And Apple people do occasionally post there, you know.
John:
one more thing before we leave this topic um about like what apple could do to fix this like in in the grand scheme of things like any any solution that set that takes the form uh program better or or let's be smarter or let's let's write fewer bugs is not a solution right that's because if you look at if you do a post-mortem in any sort of bug or problem it's like in the future we should be better programmers that one then we won't make mistakes like this that's not a solution right so
John:
uh much to marco's chagrin the solution to all these things involves process and testing and quality assurance and and systems and you can't have too many of those because then you paralyze your entire organization with spiderweb or bureaucracy but you got to have a certain amount and bugs like this where there's not that i'm saying this is a gui bug but there's there is a the way this is exploited is through gui even if the problem was actually in a library somewhere
John:
very often go through you know don't get tested well because the underlying libraries are tested to show they do everything they want but this glue code that calls into the libraries and checks the return value that code path may only be exercised by someone using the gui and writing good tests that that automate the use of the gui there are tons of tools that do it but it is the hardest kind of testing to do and i'm sure apple does a ton of it like they have to they have to do a ton of it but if there's going to be one area of testing that is very difficult
John:
to be comprehensive in and to keep up to date and to not even have a good concept of like coverage for it's gooey testing and i mean that's you know it's it's not i'm not saying they don't have to do it but like what would have fixed this problem if they had an automated fuzz testing on this exact sort of flow of like you click the lock icon in any system preference and you try to get in
John:
if they had something that was Fuzz testing that flow, one of the things in the Fuzz test would have been root empty password.
John:
And hopefully the Fuzz test would have done that multiple times or something like that, or any other sort of like triggers on the code path to make sure you're along the right lines and to do preconditions and post-condition.
John:
Root account is disabled.
John:
Fuzz test login.
John:
Root account is still disabled.
John:
Like there's so many tests you can see that would have caught this.
John:
And again, if the post-mortem says, I know exactly the tests we can write right now, they'll prevent this exact bug from ever happening again.
John:
That's, that doesn't solve the problem either.
John:
You got to go much deeper than that.
John:
And to say, okay,
John:
How do we prevent problems of this kind from happening?
John:
I would imagine that because the functional surface area of the Mac operating system is so incredibly vast, if you were to put a percentage number on how many code paths are executed as part of the surely massive amount of automated testing that Apple does on the Mac operating system...
John:
The percentage would be terrifyingly small, especially when compared to the incredible coverage numbers that people who get to write like faceless libraries do.
John:
You know, like what does the coverage test look like on a small, tight, well-maintained, really important library, especially involving the kernel or security?
John:
You can test that thing to death.
John:
Like you can just put it in a little black box and torture it for like the file system.
John:
The amount of testing they did on APFS, I'm sure was astronomical where you could just have that thing grinding hour and hour, day after day, random IOs.
John:
Just and then like stop it every 300 hours to see if the file system is hosed in any way and like put auditing and tracing in every single step of the process and just run that for months and months and years and years.
John:
That's how you update a billion phones without anybody noticing that you change their file system.
John:
Right.
John:
Doing that same kind of testing for the entirety of an operating system, especially exercising the GUI.
John:
a gui that changes a lot is really really hard and i think that's you know what's gonna the actual solution to this if you keep like not 5 ying it but 17 ying it is uh more money more time and more money in the mac os because any solution you come up with about like let's change our procedures in some subtle way it's not as if they're not doing this testing because they because they're lazy or don't feel like it
John:
All these things take people and people cost money and it's time.
John:
And so I hope that the outcome of this is to dedicate more resources towards, you know, automated and manual testing of the Mac operating system, because that's the only way you're going to catch more bugs.
John:
You're not going to you're not going to write fewer bugs by everyone suddenly becoming a better programmer.
John:
You just have to catch more bugs.
John:
And I hope that's a solution here.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Hover, domain names for whatever you're passionate about.
Marco:
Go to hover.com slash ATP to learn more and get 10% off your first purchase.
Marco:
Building your online brand has never been more important.
Marco:
Show the community who you are and what you're passionate about without tying it to whatever publishing platform or social network is popular this year.
Marco:
Because that stuff changes over time, more quickly than you might think.
Marco:
My first email address was at juno.com.
Marco:
My first website was at geocities.com.
Marco:
Both seemed huge and invincible at the time, like things do today.
Marco:
But these change quickly in this business.
Marco:
The best thing you can do to keep your email address and website timeless and future-proof, and to never have to tell anybody, oh, I changed my website, or I changed my email host, this is my new email address, update your address book.
Marco:
Nobody likes to hear that from anybody, and no one ever updates their address book.
Marco:
The best way to avoid ever needing to do that is to have your own domain name.
Marco:
And Hover is the best place to find, buy, and manage domains.
Marco:
They offer over 400 domain extensions from classics like .com to all the new fun ones like .plumbing and .diamonds.
Marco:
They have no tricks, no shady upsells, no scammy add-ons.
Marco:
They have free Whois privacy and all sorts of convenient features like Hover Connect to let you quickly set up websites on it without having to manually enter a bunch of settings.
Marco:
If you're a power user, they also offer advanced DNS controls and whatever other kinds of advanced controls you might need, and they have customer support that is top-notch in case you need any help with any of this.
Marco:
I manage most of my domains at Hover, and it is a breeze.
Marco:
You want your domain registrar to be really easy to use for that first hour that you have to use it, and then you never want to have to think about it again, and that's what Hover gives me.
Marco:
It's wonderful.
Marco:
It just works.
Marco:
It serves my needs perfectly, and I don't really have to think about it most of the time.
Marco:
It's fantastic.
Marco:
So go to hover.com slash ATP to learn more and get 10% off your first purchase.
Marco:
Hover, get a domain name for what you're passionate about.
Marco:
I think also the general bugginess in many ways of High Sierra, which was ostensibly a bug-fixing release or a refinement release of the OS, I think more clearly than ever shows that the annual release cycle that Apple has pushed for, for all their platforms for the last few years, that this is...
Marco:
as inappropriate as ever for macOS.
Marco:
That the annual release cycle makes tons of sense for iOS where it's in this hyper-competitive space and it's moving quickly and it's still, you know, a relatively younger, although not by much, now operating system.
Marco:
But on macOS, like...
Marco:
It seems like the faster they go on macOS, the worse the quality problems get.
Marco:
And no one on the Mac is clamoring for this to be updated every year.
Marco:
Like, no one.
Marco:
On the Mac, if anything, people are like, please stop touching this because you keep breaking it.
Marco:
So I hope that... I know what I ask for with the Mac is often unrealistic and unlikely to happen with modern-day Apple.
Marco:
But I really think the annual release cycle, if it even makes sense for iOS, which it probably does, it definitely does not make sense for macOS.
Marco:
And also, it's making macOS worse.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
The Mac is so deprioritized in the company now.
Marco:
And I'm not even going to argue right now whether that should or shouldn't be the case.
Marco:
Not for this episode.
Marco:
But it is so deprioritized and seemingly de-resourced in the company these days.
Marco:
that by having it on a very aggressive release cycle to keep up, I guess, with marketing features for everything else they're doing, you're dooming it to being more buggy over time.
Marco:
You're dooming it to having rush jobs done.
Marco:
Even this ostensibly bug fix release of High Sierra...
Marco:
They did major changes under the hood.
Marco:
Like, the new Windows server is a huge thing.
Marco:
I think my LCD font rendering disabling checkbox is still broken, even in 10.whatever.1.
Marco:
I'm hoping they fix it in .2, but I'm not holding my breath on that one.
Marco:
Like, there's so much about High Sierra that has been broken.
Marco:
And Sierra honestly wasn't that much better before that.
Marco:
It wasn't that long before that that we had Discovery.
Marco:
What was that?
Marco:
Was that LCAP or whatever came after that?
Marco:
I lost track of all these mountains.
Marco:
But you can't have a very aggressive software release schedule and also have it be like a low priority that you're going to not give it a whole lot of staff and time to develop things well on it.
Marco:
The amount of resources that Apple is devoting to macOS can't keep up with a one-year release cycle and maintain quality.
Marco:
They have to either dramatically increase the priority of macOS and the company, which I think is very unlikely, or slow it down and only do it every two years like they used to.
Marco:
Because what they are doing right now is resulting in more bad software.
John:
I was just thinking that if they actually did go to a two year schedule, it'd be like, they don't even care enough about the Mac to update it every year, which is, you know, it's double edged sword.
John:
And I kind of understand why they do yearly one.
John:
I continue to believe that they can successfully do yearly releases if they scope them right.
John:
And, you know, and like I said, I feel like they do have to put more resources towards it.
John:
um but if they went to two years i'd be fine and and in the past they weren't at two years they were like accidentally at like 18 months and this sort of bumpy schedule like whenever they got around to it they kind of spread out like i did a graph in one of my old reviews of the the time between releases but this year cadence has been you know that's that's been their decision they're gonna they're going to meet the yearly schedule and their tool for meeting the yearly schedule to adjust scope and i think they have been adjusting scope pushing things out of releases but
John:
I think there's always a temptation to put things in releases that are just barely, like, do you think it's ready to be in the release, or do we have to boot it out?
John:
You have to make that decision months ahead of time, and you have to kind of make a call, and human nature is to say, I think the team can make it if they work really hard, and I think it's going to be in, so let's leave the new Windows server in.
John:
It only crashes on a few GPUs, and I'm sure they'll have that worked out by the time it releases, and it turns out they don't have it worked out by the time it releases, and it's like, maybe we should have kicked that out, but...
John:
On the other hand, you could say, look, if you keep kicking it out like this, it'll never be so ready to go that you feel like you have to do it.
John:
And if you never updated it, you're going to be in HFS Plus situation.
John:
So at some point, you have to actually ship.
John:
And the only way to find all the real bugs is to put it out into the real world.
John:
And that's the nature of software and management.
John:
That's the job Apple has before it.
John:
But I do think that...
John:
high sierra does not live up to its billing as a uh snow leopard type release even though snow leopard had more bugs than people think it did that their memories are fuzzy on that but like that doesn't live up to the memories of snow leopard type release where it is a refinement of sierra that just makes everything better and faster
John:
it was a refinement of sierra and it did make things better and faster but the the small number of things they changed like they had some bugs of their own and lots of long-standing bugs didn't get fixed just tech debt that's what it boils down to like this is the thing a lot of people are pointing out in all their complaints about bugs and that's why i pointed the pile of pebbles and the pile of pebbles getting bigger you have to pay down your tech debt you have to
John:
address it and say that bug that marco's been having for you know two releases about his bluetooth randomly disconnecting
John:
I know it's a pain in the ass to figure it out and it's unreproducible and he's not filing bug reports, but you just got to figure that out.
John:
Because if you don't, it will just linger there forever.
John:
And it will linger there forever alongside the new bug that you added as part of whatever new feature you added.
John:
And the pile of pebbles gets bigger.
John:
You got to at least keep the pile of pebbles at like a manageable size.
John:
We're not saying you have to drive it down to zero.
John:
It's software, right?
John:
You're never going to drive it down to zero.
John:
But if you allow them to accumulate and that pile gets bigger every release, people become disillusioned.
John:
right because there's always new bugs and your old ones never get fixed and it's like why are you even releasing new operating system that's when people say let's go to every two years or whatever so i think it is possible to do an every year release but if if if it is easier for apple to go to every two year release then they should do that
Marco:
I mean, the way I look at it is like, you know, imagine like on a smaller scale, like imagine like me as a single developer.
Marco:
Imagine if all year I didn't really touch Overcast.
Marco:
I was doing other things.
Marco:
I was too busy to work on Overcast.
Marco:
And every summer I gave myself one week to make a new big point version of it.
Marco:
and then I could release it, fix bugs for two days, and then I wouldn't be able to work on it anymore until the next summer.
Marco:
Of course the quality would go down.
Marco:
Of course I'd have to rush to get things in there, and everything I did would be half-baked.
Marco:
I wouldn't have time to fully bake it.
Marco:
I wouldn't have enough time afterwards to fix bugs.
Marco:
Bugs would just sit around forever until the next year when I couldn't fix the old bugs.
Marco:
I'd have to make new features for the new marketing push.
Marco:
That's, I think, a pretty good scale model of how Mac OS feels.
Marco:
It feels like most people are not able to or allowed to or allocated to work on it most of the time.
Marco:
And what time they get on it seems to be limited to marketing features and not fixing bugs.
Marco:
And I think your pebble pile analogy is great, and I think it's pretty clear that we're going in the direction of accumulating more of those pebbles over time, not fewer.
Marco:
Like, the pile is just getting bigger over time, and that technical debt is not being paid off at a fast enough rate.
Marco:
The saddest part about this is that nobody is really asking for this.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
Mac users don't need a new OS every year.
Marco:
We really don't.
Marco:
Like, I'm still on Sierra because High Sierra is so buggy I'm a little scared to switch to it.
Marco:
I only have it on the laptop and not my main computer.
Marco:
Part of the reason is, like, why?
Marco:
Why should I switch to it?
Marco:
The sales pitch for High Sierra seems to get worse every day.
Marco:
Why should I upgrade exactly?
Marco:
Why is Apple forcing this upgrade down my throat with these notifications that pre-downloaded to my system and everything?
Marco:
Apple's pushing really, really hard to force people to update to High Sierra when it's still in a really buggy state, which that alone shows pretty bad judgment on Apple's part.
Marco:
What's in it for me as a user?
Marco:
Not much.
Marco:
The only thing I gain from it is...
Marco:
Certain things work better when all your stuff is on the new OS.
Marco:
Things like certain handoff features or iCloud syncing features, AirDrop, Calendar Sync doesn't actually work anymore for me.
Marco:
Thanks a lot.
Marco:
For the most part, the main motivating reason I have to upgrade to High Sierra right now is it's the newest OS.
Marco:
And my other stuff is starting to slowly break because my computer is not on the newest OS.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
There's nothing about HiCR that I actually want.
Marco:
Because what it comes with is all these bugs and all these half-baked incomplete features like my loss of my LCD font smoothing thing.
Marco:
And that might get fixed in the next version, but it might not.
Marco:
As a Mac user, all this stuff they're changing radically and all these costs we are paying and all these big bugs and new subsystems being rewritten in ways that are almost as good as the old ones but broken.
Marco:
I didn't ask for that.
Marco:
I do want macOS to move forward.
Marco:
And I want... I really hope that the macOS still has a roadmap ahead of it.
Marco:
But I don't want it to be done sloppily, badly, and rushed out.
Marco:
I'd rather it be done slowly and right.
Marco:
And to have fewer awesome things in each release, if that's even possible...
Marco:
Then to have it be done half-assed and rushed and then have really buggy software come out every year and have my system break for four months every year in the fall.
John:
I think the most attractive aspect of the two-year plan is the part that people probably don't think about as much.
John:
But what that would mean...
John:
Because imagine like High Sierra didn't come out and we were still on Sierra, right?
John:
What that would mean is that Sierra point releases would continue for another year.
John:
It would be, you know, 10-12-6, 10-12-7, 10-12-8, 10-12-9.
John:
And all those point releases, all those patch level releases...
John:
uh you know they're not replacing the windows server in one of those right they're probably not changing the file system but who the hell knows they did it on 10.2 or whatever on ios right um but the nature of those point releases tends to prevent apple from doing any big changes so what what is everybody doing in those releases you know what they're doing in all those point releases you know as that number gets bigger and bigger and even goes into double digits as it has in the past
John:
they're fixing little bugs that's all they're doing like that's all they have like there's usually no you know security fixes and bug fixes and the bigger that number gets uh the the sort of we all assume the more stable and more mature that operating system gets that kind of also makes the the big release harder like when i think it was like tiger or something out of like 10 4 11 or something
John:
when you get yeah someone already said in the chat room um when you get up that high the challenge for the 10.5.0 at least for the next major version release for the next like newly named cat or or california place release is so much higher because it's like we have enjoyed this period of peace and stability and
John:
like we've we're up into we're up into the double digits on on the last number in our versions and everything is good and like every little like that team that is doing those point releases you know and i don't even know it's a separate team or whatever but those people like they're running out of bugs to fix like they're knocking things down they're like you know oh you having some obscure problem with your bluetooth the entire team's going to spend the next two months just looking at that problem because we have no other bugs to fix right we're not on the glory team doing the next version
John:
um and you hope those are synchronized with what's happening in the future or ice release but inevitably when the point zero comes out it's always less stable than the other one because that's the one that has the big subsistence replaced and i'm all for big subsistence replacements i love it which is why i just want them to add more money and time and developers and still do it that way but
John:
um if we did go to the two-year schedule i think we would have at least one year of peace and prosperity where you know the chicken in every pot and people's bugs are getting fixed and just you know the point releases come out and we just blindly install them knowing that it's just one more bug fixed and one more performance improvement and everything gets great uh and so i i would i could do with a a run of of uh double digit uh at the end of the version numbers to see what that's like again because those are good times
Casey:
I don't disagree about the two-year schedule thing, but I don't understand why two years or a lengthening of major releases has to be the answer.
Casey:
I feel like just different choices, even on the same cadence, would be okay.
Casey:
And I don't think it's fair for us to conjecture about what is or is not important to Apple internally, but certainly from the perspective of an outsider like me—
Casey:
It seems like Apple doesn't value bug-free software either the same way that they did or as much as any of us would like them to.
Casey:
And I feel like this is starting to gain a little traction.
Casey:
I feel like I'm noticing friends and family rolling their eyes and saying, oh, well, that's Apple.
Casey:
And this is more than just, oh, screw you, autocorrect.
Casey:
And this is more than just hating on Siri, which I'm becoming more and more...
Casey:
interested in as time goes on, because I really feel like Siri is a dumpster fire.
Casey:
And I don't even have an Alexa to compare to.
Casey:
Just using Siri has been more and more frustrating over time.
Casey:
But anyway, I feel like my family is starting to get frustrated with things that are problems, that are software problems that are coming out of Apple.
Casey:
And I feel like...
Casey:
From an outsider's perspective, it appears as though the institutional value is way heavier on new shiny, and I think you guys are both saying this, is way heavier on new shiny than it is on boring but useful stability.
Casey:
And in the same ways, you know, we said last week, you know, Jenkins is not sexy.
Casey:
You know, bug-free software to most developers, especially younger ones, is not terribly sexy.
Casey:
But to us old people, and now I'll call myself old, bug-free software, or as close as you can get, of course, is super sexy.
Casey:
And I want a lot more of that in my life.
Casey:
I want to write it better and I want to consume it.
Casey:
And it just feels like...
Casey:
Apple hasn't cared about stability as much as they appeared to in the past.
Casey:
Now, why is that?
Casey:
It could be any number of things.
Casey:
Maybe it's that they're spread thin, not necessarily in terms of people, but there's just a lot more going on in all of these OSs.
Casey:
There's a lot more stuff.
Casey:
Take a silly example like Handoff.
Casey:
Handoff is a thing where you can have a device nearby and your two devices will talk to each other, I think via iCloud, and my phone will say, oh, I'm looking at such and such URL.
Casey:
And then my Mac will say, hey, I see your phone is physically nearby and it's looking at such and such URL.
Casey:
Would you like to open that here?
Casey:
Like, that in and of itself does not seem that inherently complex and in many ways is very, very useful.
Casey:
But that's adding a complexity that none of us had, Apple, us, you know, anyone, a few years ago.
Casey:
And I don't know.
Casey:
I just feel like as the OSs have been getting more and more and more involved and more and more and more complex...
Casey:
There has not appeared to have been a commensurate interest or increase in interest in stability and quality assurance.
Casey:
And it's getting to the point that just a week or two ago, I wish I remember what I was doing or what happened.
Casey:
But I thought for a fleeting moment, like, I can't put up with this anymore.
Casey:
And I want to say it was something on my phone.
Casey:
And I really, really, really wish I remember what it was.
Casey:
And for a fleeting moment, just for a second, I thought, I can't put up with this anymore.
Casey:
This shit never works.
John:
Let me tell you what you might have been thinking of because this is exactly the last time I had this thought.
John:
My wife's been unlocking her computer with her Series 3 watch because she's got a high Sierra.
John:
She's got a 5K Max.
John:
She's got a Series 3 Apple Watch and doing the watch unlock thing.
John:
And she liked it until it stopped working.
John:
And why did it stop working?
John:
Pfft.
John:
Beats the hell out of me.
John:
HDMI CEC?
John:
Might as well be.
John:
Might as well be.
John:
Because that's the type of thing.
John:
So that feature was introduced a while ago, and it was tweaked for High Sierra, right?
John:
And this is an example of the complexity of the case he was talking about.
John:
It's a complicated thing.
John:
It is multiple operating systems, multiple devices, multiple wireless radios, and all sorts of crap.
John:
Like...
John:
It is ferociously complicated, a complication that never existed in the old world.
John:
It was like one computer that wasn't even networked.
John:
Right.
John:
Let alone, you know, this your watch and people walking around and radios bouncing and trying to judge distances and authentication system like so much opportunity for things to go wrong.
John:
Right.
John:
But it's a feature they chose to introduce.
John:
And I can understand it being buggy when they first put it out.
John:
But if this is going to be a feature that you have, like, say, you know, that we're going to ship this feature, you have to be committed to keep working on it until it works basically all the time.
John:
Because otherwise, why have the feature?
John:
Because features that don't work all the time, people give up on.
John:
Like, Casey, whatever feature you were trying to think of, you're just like, I give up.
John:
Like, it is not, you know, they're very difficult to debug.
John:
You're not sure what to do.
John:
You don't know why.
John:
it isn't working and at a certain point you're like well just forget it then because if it doesn't work all the time i don't want to be sitting there and wondering why it's not working but it's you know it gives me like the message that watch isn't in range or try again or whatever it's like i'm sitting right here like i always do what's the problem maybe if i reboot both things and it's like no i'm i'm not going to reboot i'm doing stuff i don't want to reboot the computer i don't want to reboot my watch i don't want to sign out of icloud and you just give up on it that feature might as well not exist right
John:
It is either going to work enough that it is usable or it's not going to.
John:
And that bar is not met by a lot of things.
John:
Maybe Siri is one of those things for a lot of people.
John:
Like, I talk to Siri sometimes, but she annoys me and doesn't give me answers.
John:
And so I just don't talk to her anymore.
John:
Or I only have her set timers or whatever, do some sort of limited thing.
John:
And that's that's the kind of failure you mentioned stability before in valuing like bug free software.
John:
That's kind of failure doesn't show up in easy metrics.
John:
I think Apple software and I mentioned this before is much better about crashing and leaking memory than it has been in a long time because those are easy things to measure.
John:
But these other kind of bugs that are just kind of like frustrating nothing crashes no data loss but sometimes it doesn't work for inexplicable reasons and it makes you abandon the feature.
John:
That's really difficult for it to show up in Apple's metrics, you know, because Apple is not as obsessive as some other as every iOS app is about tracking every single thing that you do as a user.
John:
Like it's not tracking your every motion and recording your screen and reporting it back to Apple.
John:
They are sending back crash reports and stuff like that.
John:
But and occasionally they'll ask you for system reports for bug things.
John:
But.
John:
If people give up on a feature and don't end up using it, Apple probably has limited reasons, limited knowledge of that.
John:
Or if they do know about it, they don't know what the cause is.
John:
And I would love to tell Apple, hey, Apple, we're about to give up on ever trying to unlock our computer with our watch because it suddenly stopped working and I have no idea why.
John:
And that's a failure that...
John:
you know probably doesn't even show up on customer sat because you're like well i couldn't unlock with my watch before and for a day or two it worked and it was cool but now it doesn't oh well and back to the status quo but i think it's a pretty massive failure to say look if you're going to have that feature you got to make it work all the time just like typing your password in the text box works all the time right the watch has to be like that too or just don't have that feature or have a way to debug it or figure something out but that that's one of my major sources of frustration
Casey:
Coincidentally, Watch Unlocked has been reasonably bulletproof for me, but I don't debate anything you just said.
Casey:
If that happens to be your bugbear, then yeah, you're absolutely right.
Casey:
As you were talking, I thought of a couple of examples of when this was infuriating to me.
Casey:
The first example...
Casey:
I'm trying to figure out how much depth I want to get into here.
Casey:
The first example was I went for a run on Thanksgiving morning.
Casey:
And I did that in part because it was a day that I would normally go for a run if I hadn't just recorded ATP.
Casey:
But beyond that, I wanted the neat little badge that you get if you do 5K, walk, run, push, etc.
Casey:
And when I did my 5K run, I never got my badge.
Casey:
And it turned out after talking to a lot of people, some inside Apple, some not, it turned out what had happened was I had set my watch and phone to be localized to Australia.
Casey:
And the reason I did that is because I want to be able to have digital.
Casey:
day-day slash month-month slash year-year like it should be and still have everything else be the same, like dollar, for example.
Casey:
Now, unfortunately, I get metric in a lot of places, and I'm not here to debate metric versus imperial, which is weird because that's one of my favorite pastimes, but nevertheless, I had my phone and watch set to metric.
Casey:
Excuse me, set to Australia.
Casey:
And so, understandably, it makes sense that I didn't get an American Thanksgiving thing
Casey:
on on a phone and watch that were set to australia now i still disagree with it but i understand it like if i'm standing in america the thing has a both of these devices have a freaking gps on them they know where i'm standing they know where i did that run i can go into my health app right now and see the route i took that run on so to me this is a stupid decision but i can understand it
Casey:
Nevertheless, I finally figure out, okay, that's why.
Casey:
And then I set my devices to America because I hear it's getting great again.
Casey:
Can't see it, but that's what I'm told.
Casey:
And so I set it to America.
Casey:
It stings.
Casey:
I set it to America and the 2017 badge shows up reasonably quickly.
Okay.
Casey:
But the 2016 badge, which I had also earned from a walk, is nowhere to be found.
Casey:
And I learned that if you just wait, it should magically appear.
Casey:
And guess what happened?
Casey:
I just waited, and then friggin' magic happened, and it magically appeared.
Casey:
Like...
John:
icloud is a thing why is this not in icloud like what why is this a thing the apple watch is the nintendo switch of apple's devices like super important data that people care about like not actually real world important but like important to people kind of like you know you're saving zelda right
John:
in the grand scheme of things it's not important like you're not going to die from it right but to people who have sunk you know 100 hours into zelda it is super important so those stupid badges on the apple watch for your achievements in the grand scheme of things nothing's going to happen to you if they're gone but people are so angry if they go away and so how does apple protect what is perhaps the second most valuable piece of information they store first being their actual data but the second most valuable one being their stupid achievement badges oh we're not going to back that up
John:
oh yeah there's a million things you can do to lose all that information no no we don't care about that at all same thing with nintendo switch like no yeah no you can't back up your data no we won't start in the cloud just if and if your switch dies yeah you lose all your saves it's such a dumb decision and i think like it stems from just i mean nintendo is inexcusable nintendo has a history of doing stupid things but apple like i don't think they understand exactly how seriously people take those badges
John:
Yeah.
John:
And how how angry how unreasonably angry people are when they lose their badges.
Casey:
That was me.
Casey:
I spent half an hour running.
Casey:
Well, ostensibly because I want to get healthier, but also because I wanted that friggin badge.
Marco:
Yeah, you won't credit.
Marco:
Damn it.
Marco:
You worked hard for that.
Casey:
i wanted my treat max got his treat i want my treat so anyway the point is is that it's a stupid thing just like john said and i don't know maybe it is maybe those activities or achievements rather are synced via iCloud but why did it take like 24 or 48 hours for that junk to magically come from the cloud onto my device i don't i don't think it actually is synced i think it's on device and yeah the
John:
i think they're getting like nintendo they are getting better about it nintendo has actually said they are working their way towards sane cloud backups which it should have had from day one i think apple will eventually work on this but judging by how long it's taken them to not deliver the icloud message sync that they advertise for ios 11 and again another source of like not just people caring about the contents of it but just you know
John:
baseline functionality that people expect that on all your devices you see all your conversations that you've had anywhere a thing that has never been true about iMessage that they promised to make it true your achievements uh your your silly achievements on your apple watch they should be as bulletproof as your family photos
John:
they should be everywhere you should be able to throw your watch into the ocean and get a new apple watch put it on and all your achievements from all your past apple watches should be there to show that yes you had a 28 day streak of meeting your goals in 2015 like why shouldn't it be it's such a small amount of data and apple should know how incredibly important it is beyond all reason to the people who do them like that's the whole point of that's why they're giving them these shiny little 3d things it's a silly token that we know will you know
John:
it's like it's like free-to-play gaming like they're they're exploiting human you know foibles to make you exercise more and them being carefree with not like not preserving them with the same vigor that they preserve your family photos just shows a disconnect like a misunderstanding of of how like in one hand they know how humans work so they're gonna make the system on the other hand they don't understand how important it is for them to keep this stuff in sync
Casey:
Yeah, I couldn't agree more.
Casey:
The other example I had, and this one could very well be 100% on my shoulders, but thinking like a consumer and not thinking like a developer, it sure doesn't feel like it is.
Casey:
And I'm the only one I think that I've heard complaining about this.
Casey:
So maybe it is me.
Casey:
But the problem I'm having is I'm getting to the point that I feel like I am incapable of typing on my phone anymore.
Casey:
I just can't do it successfully.
Casey:
I cannot get a frigging sentence out on my phone without having a thousand typos.
Casey:
And it's driving me insane.
Casey:
And half the time it's autocorrect doing something increasingly bananas as time goes on.
Casey:
which is why I think maybe it's this weirdo machine learning stuff.
Marco:
Yeah, that's not going well.
Casey:
Yeah, it's really not.
Casey:
And I understand the thought process.
Casey:
It makes sense.
Casey:
It's a clever idea, but I don't think the execution is going well at all.
Casey:
And again, I don't know if it's just me.
Casey:
Maybe I just have fatter fingers than I've ever had despite all this wonderful running I'm doing.
Casey:
Maybe I'm exercising my fingers as I'm running so they're getting fatter and fatter with muscle.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
But whatever it is...
Casey:
Whatever it is, I feel like I cannot type on my phone anymore without a billion typos.
Casey:
And it's getting to the point that, you know, once we got SMS on the Mac, which is a great example of something that made my life demonstrably better.
Casey:
I mean that genuinely.
Casey:
Once I could send not only iMessages, but SMS from my Mac, it was amazing.
Casey:
And the reason it was amazing was because I could talk to all of my in-laws, none of whom have iPhones.
Casey:
I could talk to them and send them text messages from my Mac on a full-size keyboard, and it was magic, and it always worked.
Casey:
And to be honest, to this day, it still almost always works.
Casey:
So that is an example of a feature that I think is very complex, because the only thing that can send this SMS, as far as I'm aware, is my phone.
Casey:
But it's very complex, but it works, and it's almost bulletproof.
Casey:
So anyway, it's gotten to the point with my iPhone that if I have to type more than like a one or two line text message, I'm going searching for the nearest Mac so I can type it with a physical keyboard because I know at least then I'll be able to do it without ripping my hair out.
Casey:
And I apologize if it's just me, but it's a very clear example of a time when I thought about throwing my phone out the window or I really for a fleeting moment thought to myself, so how bad are those pixels these days anyway?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And like, that's that's a problem.
Casey:
I'm a super fan.
Casey:
Like part of my living is talking about how much I love Apple.
Casey:
And I'm thinking to myself, oh, God, maybe I should just maybe I should put this aside.
Casey:
And you know what?
Casey:
The healthy thing to do would probably be for me to try a pixel and realize that I'm just being a big baby.
Casey:
And really, really life is considerably worse on the other side.
John:
unless it isn't but who knows i don't know am i crazy on this like do you feel the same way i do it's funny that you mentioned sms on the mac because i i have uh one person that i talk to that i doesn't have an iphone that i have to send sms to and i always do it from my phone because i can never remember if you could do it from the mac and
John:
And every time I went to go check, I'm usually at work, like when I had to send SMSs to this person, every time I went to check at my Mac, I would bring up messages on my Mac at work, and I would find it signed out, and I would enter my correct password to sign in, and it would just say, nope, sorry, I couldn't sign you in.
John:
Sorry, error failed, couldn't sign into iMessage.
John:
uh and the only fix to this is for me to restart my mac uh once i actually reset my pram but then i realized it was probably just the restarting of it that did it that's how desperate i was but but anyway this is another one of those things of like hey does i message work on your mac yeah most of the time most of the time like i i send and receive messages on when the messages application on my mac at work back and forth to my wife you know it's nice to type on the big keyboard just like casey right here i am doing messages uh
John:
but every time i i think oh i should try sms from here too and i bring out messages and i just get the little the thing pops up and says and wants me to sign in and has like you can skip this process anyway like i realize i am permanently signed out again something having to do probably with hardware ids and vpns and the fact that it's on wi-fi and ethernet at the same time when it's plugged into the dock and i don't i'm like all sorts of guessing about what could possibly cause the iMessage to be confused and
John:
but anyway i restart i log back in usually restarting fixes it and then i get a notifications on every single one of my devices that says you just signed in with your apple id to i message on blah blah blah you know that message you get like i get that on all my devices which makes you think it has it has reprovisioned a new private and public key for that one computer
Casey:
that's the type of thing that like you know messages it's a thing it's there it works i'm not abandoning it because the utility is still too high but it bothers me that it's not as reliable as aim on adm was for like a decade well in your defense sms relay is like its own dance that you have to go through on each computer and ipad and whatever ios device that you want to do it on so like i actually wrote a post in late 2014 which we'll link in the show notes
John:
as to the song and dance you need to get through in order to turn this on and this is just for sms this is not i'm does it just proxy through your phone it's not actually correct yeah oh that sucks oh right well maybe that's well this is the this is the answer that i can never get to because i was permanently always permanently signed out of messages but i'm good to know that this must have been what i was forgetting about this was that it actually does yeah that's a bummer
Casey:
You should read my blog, John.
Casey:
It's pretty good.
John:
I think I did.
John:
I'm looking at this thing, and I remember your horribly blurred-out screenshots, which you should never, ever do.
Casey:
I was looking at this right now and gagging, actually.
Casey:
It's funny you say that.
Casey:
I was just looking at it and going, oh.
Casey:
But anyway.
John:
I've said this before.
John:
It's a thing that people don't appreciate of doing macOS reviews for so long that I didn't have blurred-out screenshots.
John:
And you know how hard that is?
John:
It's really hard.
Casey:
Oh, I don't doubt it.
John:
It's really hard because personal information is everywhere.
Casey:
Anyway, but yeah, but the point I'm driving at is, you know, in some of these things, like I forget how complex they are and how reasonably bulletproof they are in SMS.
Casey:
Like this is happy Casey, right?
Casey:
Like SMS relay is an example of that.
Casey:
It has to send my SMS is to my phone because as far as I understand, my phone is the only thing that can actually issue an SMS to my carrier.
Casey:
And this stuff works.
Casey:
I use it all day, every day, and it works great.
Casey:
It is almost flawless.
Casey:
But if I actually want to send an SMS from the frigging device that is sending them, if I want to type a text message on my iPhone, it only gets through without typos maybe one time out of three.
Casey:
And it's driving me insane.
John:
I don't know if you can blame the autocorrect for that.
John:
Aside from the silly can't type the letter I thing, I know they have had some wonkiness with it, but you sure it's just not a new size of the phone because the 10 is differently sized?
Casey:
It could be.
John:
And all your thumb reflexes are off?
Casey:
It could be, but I feel like what it feels like, and again, this is maybe all in my head, but it feels like that.
Casey:
The way the accuracy checks on key presses either got less forgiving or, I don't know, something happened like two or three, maybe even four versions of iOS ago.
Casey:
And I used to type really accurately, like around the time of the 6, and it was like the 6S or something like that.
Casey:
where everything took a turn, and all of a sudden I just could not type anymore, and it's just been getting worse and worse.
Casey:
And you would think, like, between the 6S and my 7, it would get better.
Casey:
And yes, I agree with you that when I go to the 10, maybe it would have a moment.
Casey:
I would have to retrain myself a little bit.
Casey:
And I think that that's some of it, but I feel like just the way...
Casey:
The way it detects my key presses, even if I was wrong, it understood what I was doing in the 5S6 era.
Casey:
And now it's either less forgiving or it's just changed the way things work.
Casey:
And I have not been able to retrain my brain.
Casey:
I've been able to retrain my brain on the home button, but I can't retrain my brain on the keyboard.
John:
You need to turn to my mom and just start pressing that microphone button and talking to your phone.
John:
Transcription is really good.
John:
That's the only way she types into these things.
John:
She talks to it in a very stilted, artificial sounding voice.
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
Well, thanks to our three sponsors this week.
Marco:
Hover, Away, and Eero.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
John:
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-E-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
Casey:
And episode 250 is when it all took a turn.
Marco:
What a great episode 250 spectacular that was.
Casey:
Can we talk about anything that makes us happy?
Casey:
When I'm getting fired up about things, then... You know it's bad.
Casey:
Yeah, something is not good.
John:
Yeah, our after show is only one thing.
John:
Casey on Cars.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, that's a thing.
Casey:
That turns out that I completed my video.
Casey:
So if you haven't watched it, I will put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
I have released Casey on Cars Episode 1, which is on the Alfa Romeo podcast.
Casey:
And the response has been exceedingly positive, which I am super thankful for.
Casey:
However, I think that I'm still only within my own audience.
Casey:
And so there was a comment that came through.
Casey:
I'll have to see if I can find it really, really quickly, but I may not be able to.
Casey:
But there was a comment that somebody wrote in that seemed clear to me that it was someone outside of my audience.
Casey:
And they were like, oh, this is garbage.
Casey:
Like, oh, here we go.
Casey:
BMW is a copy of an alpha near already 40 years.
Casey:
I think this person is not a native English speaker.
Casey:
And you Apple headphones just show how much you know about quality.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
You Apple headphones?
Marco:
Oh, AirPods?
Casey:
So basically because I thought an Apple product, much less AirPods, were sufficient for this video, obviously I don't know what I'm doing.
Casey:
And again, obviously we've talked to this to death.
Casey:
We don't need to go back into it.
Casey:
I understand the foibles or many of the foibles of the video, but if you hadn't heard me talk this to death, that is the sort of comment that an obnoxious YouTuber would write.
Casey:
And thus, I think that particular individual may have come from outside my audience.
Casey:
But everyone else, even like the pretty critical ones from, I could tell it was somebody who knew who I was, right?
Casey:
It would say, oh, you know, this really does have crappy audio and you got to fix that.
Casey:
But, you know, whatever.
Casey:
Like that to me sounded like it was my audience, whereas this one did not.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Anyway, as we sit here tonight, it's over 10,000 views, which is super good for several reasons.
Casey:
One of which is you can start monetizing once your channel gets 10,000 views, which is excellent.
Casey:
So I am in automated review last I looked anyway with YouTube.
Casey:
So hopefully they will let me monetize soon.
John:
um and i don't know if i'll ever make any real money off of this but it would be nice to make more than zero and we'll see what happens once you click that monetization button you'll find out that there's a brief clip of distant music copyrighted music in the background and you'll immediately be demonetized by a machine and there'll be one strike against your account and then you'll have the real youtube experience which by the way i have had i think i already have one strike because nice copyright stuff
Casey:
Nice.
Casey:
Yeah, my channel is still under review as I write this.
Casey:
But yeah, so the response has been really, really, really positive.
Casey:
And I'm really, really, really appreciative of it.
Casey:
And the general response has been, oh...
Marco:
wasn't near as bad as i expected in fact i think mark hood said that to me privately somewhere yeah i think i chose more gentle words but yes that is that is that was my opinion of like i was expecting it to be way worse because it was your very first video of this type and you you don't have a history of making videos like this and so like right i thought i i was really thinking it was going to be a lot more painful and it wasn't painful at all like there was some audio that was bad but you know we knew but you already warned us about that
Marco:
And the fact is, the bad audio, yeah, it does detract from those scenes, but you still can watch them and enjoy what you're saying.
Marco:
It doesn't totally ruin it.
Marco:
It's noticeable.
Marco:
But the video overall, it was great because you actually nailed the writing and the commentary.
Marco:
That's very kind of you.
Marco:
And that's what we're watching for.
Marco:
You had said in our last talk about this on our last after show, you had said you think you had something here with the story and everything.
Marco:
And I didn't know whether that would come across in the video because it takes a certain degree of skill and sensibility of doing videos to have what you're saying or what you're trying to say come across.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
But it did.
Marco:
You did it.
Marco:
It worked.
Marco:
And it was really good.
Marco:
And as I said to you, I think, privately and in my tweet mini-review about it, yeah, there are some things that could be better about it.
Marco:
But for a first video, it's incredibly good.
Marco:
It's way better than I would have guessed.
Marco:
It's way better than my first video was by a mile.
Marco:
And yeah, I think you have something here.
Marco:
And whether it reaches other people or not, or whether one rando YouTuber says something bad about it,
Marco:
you don't need to care about that oh yeah what you need to care about now is making this a thing you do if that's what you want um and you know like you might decide it's not for you that's too much work whatever i hope you don't because it turns out i think you're good at this and i think you can be even better with more experience and
Marco:
if this is a thing you want to keep doing i i will reiterate what i said last time which is find a reason to keep doing it find other cars to review review your cars that you already you have like seven cars in your garage review your dad's cars go to cars and coffee and talk about cars there and talk about why you are excited to see certain ones and why they are interesting because anybody who's ever hung around you in real life knows that you are basically always hosting a car show like you
Marco:
No matter where you are, no matter what you're doing, no matter who you're with, you will point out a car on the road and be like, oh, that's one of those.
Marco:
And you are enthusiastic about it, which is step one.
Marco:
And then step two is you will explain why that's interesting or what's cool about that car.
Marco:
You have the ability, if you want to record yourself on video talking about a car,
Marco:
You can do that in lots of different ways and times in your life for lots of different kinds of cars that have a pretty wide diversity of what makes them interesting.
Marco:
And you don't have to do only new cars.
Marco:
You don't have to do only high-end cars.
Marco:
You don't have to do only European sports cars.
Marco:
You can review the used minivan that your friends might have or something –
Marco:
You can review any car you come across, any car you might have access to for a few days.
Marco:
Whatever you need, you can do that, and I think you should.
Marco:
And your job right now is not to have this one video get tons of views and then eventually hundreds of cents of income.
Marco:
That is not your job for this.
Marco:
The job of this video is, A, to get you started making videos,
Marco:
And B, to start your YouTube channel.
Marco:
But it isn't meant to get big yet.
Marco:
Getting big takes time.
Marco:
Getting an audience takes time.
Marco:
Getting an audience worth monetizing takes time.
Marco:
newsflash you're gonna make not much from this video oh yeah oh yeah even if you get approved for monetization tomorrow you know it has already had most of the views it is likely to have because that's how youtube works yep that's how most things on the internet work and uh and and youtube rates you know it's funny like when podcasters see the view counts on youtube videos
Marco:
we're just like, oh my god, we have to get on YouTube.
Marco:
When YouTubers hear about the CPMs we charge for podcast ads, they run to us, oh my god, we have to get a podcast.
Marco:
Because YouTube views are worth so little.
Yeah.
Marco:
They do have lots of them, but they're worth nothing.
Marco:
So this is not going to be a money-making venture for you, probably for a long time, if ever.
Marco:
But your job right now is to have a creative project that might eventually become a money-making venture.
Marco:
But you should only keep doing it if you enjoy the creative project part of it, because that's all it might ever be.
Marco:
And if it is a money-making venture,
Marco:
it's not going to be a life-changing amount of money for a long time.
Marco:
You know, it might be like, I mean, I don't even know what to expect with, you know, because I don't know what kind of numbers you might expect.
Marco:
But like, you know, to be like a meaningful amount of money to have a meaningful effect on your life and like whether you can go indie full-time, which you totally should, and things like that is like, you need to be making like thousands of dollars a month from this.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, definitely.
Marco:
And I think thousands a month is unlikely for a while, especially if you're going to only release one video a year.
Marco:
I think like tens to hundreds a month is where you're probably going to start if you keep it up.
Marco:
And then if, over time, you build up a bigger audience, then you can start talking about, you know, real money, basically.
Marco:
But that's a long way into the future.
Marco:
Right now, you need to focus on, is this a thing you want to keep doing?
Marco:
And if it is...
Marco:
keep doing it like start making more car videos and they don't have to be big productions like this they can be small ones they can it can literally be you walking around cars and coffee which you do like every weekend anyway like it can literally be that and give like a 45 second overview or like a two minute overview of one or two cars that are there that are interesting and tell us why
Casey:
Yeah, I totally hear you.
Casey:
And my intention is to do Aaron's car next.
Casey:
And I'm starting to contemplate, you know, what do I have to say about Aaron's car?
Casey:
And for those that maybe fast forward this section, usually she has a almost brand new 2017 Volvo XC90, which is a big, slow, well, reasonably slow SUV.
Marco:
It's probably faster than John's computer.
Casey:
Everything is.
Casey:
I mean, our phones are.
Casey:
But anyway, I think the idea is to do that next for several reasons.
Casey:
One, I have access to it.
Casey:
Two, it's kind of the polar opposite of the Alfa Romeo.
Casey:
And three, I'm telling myself I want to try to get that done by the end of the year.
Casey:
I don't think I'll succeed, but I'm going to try.
Casey:
We also have some other big things happening at the end of the year, so that'll really throw a wrench in things.
Marco:
Newsflash, you're getting nothing done by the end of the year.
Marco:
I know.
Casey:
Don't worry about that.
Casey:
I'm setting a goal of myself.
Casey:
I'd like to spend the next week or two coming up with maybe literally the storyboards, because that's one of the regrets I have with Yalf Romeo is I never spent enough time really thinking about it until it was all over.
Casey:
really thinking about what I wanted to say.
Casey:
So I just kind of filmed everything and hoped I could make heads or tails of it after the fact, when obviously I think I did an okay job, but it would have been better if it was more deliberate.
Casey:
But anyway, I want to review Aaron's car and see what I can make of that and see if I can make something interesting out of that.
Casey:
Because an Alfa Romeo is rare and interesting to begin with.
Casey:
And if I drove up to you or to underscore and borrowed a Model S, that's interesting just because it's a Tesla.
Casey:
I'm hopeful that I can still be interesting with a more run-of-the-mill car.
Casey:
And granted, you know, a brand new Volvo SUV is not strictly run-of-the-mill, but compared to a $80,000 Alfa Romeo, it's considerably more run-of-the-mill, right?
Casey:
Yeah.
Marco:
This is like me going to borrow a 75D and like, oh, this is now the consumer-level accessible car for everyone.
Casey:
You know what I mean.
Casey:
You know what I mean.
Casey:
But yes, your point is fair.
Casey:
Your point is fair.
Casey:
So anyway, so we'll see what happens.
Casey:
I hope to stick with it.
Casey:
I'd like to hear John's thoughts, although I'm scared to.
Casey:
I'd like to hear John's thoughts in just a moment, but I thought it would be interesting to note that
Casey:
A couple of the things that I found most unexpected, really, were that the little portions I put in of Declan and Aaron seemed to resonate almost more than anything else, which is not a bad thing.
Casey:
It's a good thing.
Casey:
But what occurred to me, only because a whole ton of people said it to me, was nobody else really pays attention to what their families think.
Casey:
Or how these cars work for like regular stuff or anything other than one driver.
Casey:
And I was just, you know, telling the story of this is what I did.
Casey:
You know, I put a car seat in it.
Casey:
I drove my family around in it.
Casey:
And I didn't really think of it as like a formal statement about what they thought.
Casey:
But.
Casey:
It seemed like a lot of people hung on to the fact that I was talking about more than just me, the meathead, petrolhead, whatever, more power, more power.
Casey:
The other thing that I thought was interesting was part of the reason I put it on the lift, which was actually at my dad's house, part of the reason I put it on the lift was because that's something that most car reviewers don't do.
Casey:
Savage Geese does it, generally speaking, but most car reviewers don't do that.
Casey:
And since I have access to it, I thought, okay, I'll do that.
Casey:
And I didn't get as much of a response off of that as I expected, which is fine.
Casey:
And I was actually talking, um, talking to a friend about this and the friend had said, you know, if you were looking for content to cut, the lift might've been the first place to look because you talk about how there's really nothing that's interesting to see under the car and
Casey:
And then you talk for a couple of minutes about, well, all the stuff that's under the car.
Casey:
And so it's either pick a story and maybe you should have just cut it.
Casey:
And during the editing process, I wasn't planning on talking about this, but something that just occurred to me.
Casey:
During the editing process, I was trying real hard to get it closer to 10 minutes.
Casey:
I landed it at about 13 and a half.
Casey:
And it started after my first cut at about 15 and change.
Casey:
And I was able to get it down some.
Casey:
I don't know if you knew this, Marco, but...
Casey:
It turns out when people talk at 1X, that's like really frigging slow.
Casey:
So I would like try to make a point that I felt like was two sentences and I would look at it in Final Cut Pro and it was like 30 seconds of talking or something like that.
Casey:
It was just insane how much time it took for me to talk.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Oh, man, that was tough.
Marco:
Try to get a three-page marketing brief into a two-minute sponsor read.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
So it was weird in that sense.
Casey:
But I really enjoyed the process, and I do plan to do more of them.
Casey:
And by saying this publicly, I know I'm not going to get this thing done by the end of the year, and at that point we'll have a new kid, which means everything stops for like six months.
Casey:
But I'm hopeful that I will be able to find the time, since I'm going to be taking some time off work,
Casey:
Uh, when the, when the new baby is asleep for, you know, 10 minutes at a time, uh, I hope to find the time to be able to put together something about Aaron's car and that'll be a good next step.
Marco:
I will throw in one more thing here.
Marco:
You mentioned that people commented and liked Aaron and Declan's role in the video and that you put a car seat in it.
Marco:
And I think, first of all, I don't watch YouTube for cars, so I don't know if this is a common thing, but I have a feeling you're probably the only reviewer who put a car seat in this car in your video review.
Marco:
it's the only one i've seen that doesn't mean it's the only one but it's the only one i've seen right but and so secondly i too i mean and i i i just assumed this is maybe because i know your family but i thought like the part of aaron declin especially the look of displeasure that aaron gives you those i laughed my ass off at that point those those humanize the video because
Marco:
This is one of the things that made Top Gear so successful.
Marco:
You need a human element.
Marco:
You can't just talk about specs and just hear engine noises and just show the car over and over again.
Marco:
People care about other people.
Marco:
That's what makes videos interesting.
Marco:
That's what makes podcasts interesting.
Marco:
People will come for the content, but they will stay for the people.
Marco:
And the people and the personalities and the humanity in it are what builds and keeps an audience.
Marco:
And so that's not something you should ever shy away from.
Marco:
If anything, you should try to figure out how to add more of that.
Marco:
Part of the reason why the writing of this video was so good is because it was a lot about you and your humanity, about your identity with cars and the stick shift and everything else.
Marco:
That was a major part of your theme of this video.
Marco:
And that's interesting because you're a person and people like other people and their stories and their emotions and their personalities.
Marco:
That's an element that you should have in all of your videos, and you should definitely not try to minimize or cut out those segments.
Marco:
If anything, you should have more of those, at least if Aaron doesn't kill you first.
Casey:
Well, I was doing a real disservice to Aaron because there were only a couple times I filmed with her in the car, and the only thing that I thought was particularly useful or interesting was this –
Casey:
kind of snarky comment from her and for anyone that's met her like it is clear that that is not well i don't think anyway it's not her normal you know she's not normally snarky she's usually you know super super nice and super effusive and it was just so funny to me because this was just like uh really and so i just thought it was hysterical so i apologize publicly to aaron for kind of not putting her best foot forward but i thought the moment was worth it because it was so funny
Casey:
And, yeah, I agree.
Casey:
Like, I didn't realize that playing the family hand, which I was doing just kind of because it's part of it, was going to play so well.
Casey:
And so, you know, if possible, I'll probably play it a little harder, further, whatever the analogy is I'm looking for, the turn of phrase I'm looking for.
Casey:
I'll probably do more of it next time.
Casey:
But all right, John, lay it on me.
Casey:
Where did I go wrong?
John:
Well, I marketed his video.
John:
I told him everything was wrong with it, and then he never made another video.
John:
So I don't know if I want to do that to you.
John:
Spoiler, that's not why.
John:
Well, anyway, I could go on like that about yours, but I think, like, in the interest of time, like, well, one thing, I think the... That's where I went wrong is I didn't have an interest in time.
John:
In the interest of time, I'm just going to give you a couple of the highlights.
John:
But I do think that because the YouTube comment section is mostly populated by friends and people familiar with the show and the background and everything...
John:
um i think there was less uh terrible people there oh totally and uh and i think actually the sort of the wisdom of crowds of all the people kind of get they they hit most of the the major things if you in aggregate right um so but anyway the the three i would highlight is in no particular order um did you did you write down the script for this at a time
Casey:
No, I started storyboarding.
Casey:
And I mean that literally.
Casey:
I think I put it on an Instagram story, so there's nothing I can link to.
Casey:
But I did draw little boxes and storyboarded it a bit on one of the last days I had the car.
Casey:
But in retrospect, I think if I were to do this again with a borrowed car like this, I think I really need to take one or two days off of work.
Casey:
and spend one day thinking about and storyboarding what I want to film and spend the next day actually executing on it.
Casey:
Because what I did this time was, like I said earlier, basically just film everything I could and hope that I can piece something together afterwards.
Casey:
And there were a few places where...
Casey:
Even though the video as it's posted right now does have a bit of a story arc, I had to bring certain pieces forward or back and make them slightly awkward because the video I had, I needed to use it to fit.
Casey:
So as an example...
Casey:
I started talking about the transmission, if memory serves, a little earlier than I intended because that was the moment when I had gotten in the car and I knew enough to know that I wanted to have Jason Kamisa of Motor Trend shut his car door in his video and then have me shut the car door to be the transition back to my video.
Casey:
But because that arc didn't play exactly when I wanted it to, it ended up making the story arc a little bit awkward.
John:
Well, what was it to say about the script specifically?
John:
Not so much about the video, which I'll get to in a second, but the script part, as you noted, you take a surprising amount of times to say things, right?
John:
And so when you write for television or movies, you can't write naturalistically.
John:
You have to compress meaning and compress everything down because you don't have enough time for people to speak the way they normally speak unless you're making a specific genre of movie.
John:
where that's the whole shtick is that people actually are naturalistic, but it takes just so long.
John:
Everyone has to say everything that is essentially like, I took what a normal person would say and boiled it down, and these three paragraphs become one extremely well-crafted sentence that conveys all of the plot points, all of the character notes, all of the foreshadowing, and all of the nuance in this one line.
John:
And it's a pain to write like that, because that's not how we talk.
John:
So I would suggest...
John:
I mean, maybe this won't work for your process, but at least try to see if this is a thing that works for you to actually script it ahead of time.
John:
And when you script it, you can't even write it like a blog post.
John:
You have to write it like a video.
John:
What I'm getting is that writing for a video is different than writing for your blog, and it is way different than speaking.
John:
And I think that will let you get things tighter.
John:
If you want to use inspiration for someone whose process you probably are familiar with in listening to podcasts, just think of Gray and all the time he spends wordsmithing his narrations for his videos and how tight they are.
John:
You know, because he's just...
John:
Getting rid of needless words, compressing the idea down, finding a way to get in and out, and he does talk quickly, too.
John:
Second thing is, as many people pointed out in the comments, I know you are more enthusiastic about cars than the person I see in this video talking about cars.
Casey:
Many people said that.
Casey:
They're right.
John:
I mean, the thing is, you're more enthusiastic on this podcast about cars.
John:
Right.
John:
So that's just, you know, being on camera or whatever.
John:
I don't know what the solution is there.
John:
I have no idea how to do it.
John:
But that as a viewer, that definitely comes across.
John:
I'm like, Casey cares more about cars than this.
John:
Not that you seem nervous because you didn't.
John:
You seem relaxed, but like maybe too relaxed.
John:
You need to get worked up.
Marco:
Coffee.
John:
Third thing is you need.
John:
way more footage which i know sounds terrible because i'm watching this video i'm like oh god this must have been so much work i'm looking and like oh how many hours i watch it and i can see how many hours you're putting into it and yet what i think when i'm watching it also is you need so much more footage and you can tell that if you ever do like a graph out like just pick you know go to go to you know a crappy demuro video or a harrison video or any any uh car video your favorite thing is every time they're talking about anything
John:
They never talk for more than three words before cutting to another angle of the car.
John:
And it's not always like, how can I show what I'm talking?
John:
I'm talking about the gear shift.
John:
What am I going to show except for the gear shift?
John:
You have to cut to something when you're talking about as many scenes with you standing in front of the car and just talking.
John:
you have to cut to 900 different things during that driving on a road in the sunset driving in the rain pulling out of the drive like and don't you don't think about it but go watch another video and like see how many times they cut to sometimes a completely unrelated thing and why does that work because unlike like when i watch this video it felt a lot like i was listening to you on a podcast where you were a little sleepy because i know what you sound like on podcasts you sound like this when you talk about cars but on podcasts there's nothing to look at unless you're staring at marco's ever-changing chapter art which doesn't change that often so don't stare too much
John:
um but well except when i embedded a video in the theme song that nobody noticed i noticed it a lot of people noticed no one else noticed it no they tweeted about it didn't they everyone's excited by it no they really didn't oh well wait what did you do i the reason i look for it is because someone someone else mentioned it maybe it was someone in a slack mentioned it and i and i went and dug it out because i didn't notice it i don't look at the chapter either but someone said hey did you i like what you did with that you know the video and the whatever chapter and then i went and looked at it because somebody said it might have been someone in slack
John:
but anyway when you're watching a video and listening to you talk you your eyes are like come on feed me too what do you got for me what do you got for me and it's not that you're not attractive standing in front of a car but they need to be fed and so if you have to cut to completely unrelated footage of the car driving down a road and going around a curve and going past the high and going past low and a drone flying over the car and pulling into the driveway like that has nothing to do with what you're saying but the eyes need to be fed
John:
and you don't think about it but like i said go go pick your favorite car video and pick a section where they're just talking about something and they don't have any actual appropriate footage like they don't have anything more to show you and watch how many times they cut to just unrelated footage of the car driving and when i watch those videos i'm like this is a pleasant thing for my eyes to do because while i'm listening to your words i'm also looking at oh i haven't seen the car from that angle oh look at that oh that's a pretty tree like your brain needs to be fed in the way you don't need for podcasts or whatever because it's all sort of going on in your head or maybe you're doing dishes
John:
or whatever.
John:
I think those are the major things.
John:
Much more footage and much more cutting, more enthusiasm, and write like you write for TV or movies, not like you talk in real life.
Casey:
I think that's all completely fair.
Casey:
And one of my goals for the next video, be it Aaron's car or something else entirely, is I need to do better about B-roll of outside the car.
Casey:
I need to do better inside the car, too.
Casey:
But particularly, I think I need way more, to your point.
Casey:
You know, the car driving down the road.
Casey:
And that's a little scary, right?
Casey:
Because I don't have any roads that I can think of where I can set up like an expensive camera or a GoPro or something like that and be 100 percent confident that it's not going to get knocked over or walk or whatever.
John:
And it's just a huge amount of work.
John:
Yeah.
John:
the amount of footage you shot for this is already a huge amount of work and there still wasn't enough it's that's what i'm saying like it takes so much effort to make like one second of you know one minute of podcasting you just talk for a minute to make one minute of video you have to shoot video for what seems like hours unless until you become good at it and i don't know the solution but like that's you know that's what it like make the video half the length and shoot seven times as much footage
Marco:
And that's also why a lot of times video involves multiple people.
Marco:
It's really hard to shoot good video by yourself.
Marco:
It's possible.
Marco:
There are ways to work around that, but it's way harder and oftentimes requires way more either leaps of faith or fancy equipment or something to achieve certain effects or outcomes that normally would just take multiple people to do.
Marco:
So you can do it, but the example of leaving a camera while you drive past on a tripod,
Marco:
yeah the better solution there is to have another person at that camera and even if even it's even if it's on a tripod have them running the camera so that you can just drive by or have them drive in the car drive past you and you run the camera there's a reason why video tends to take a lot of people to do at a professional level um and yeah and i would just echo you know most most of which i'm said i totally agree with um the having a lot of footage to cut to
John:
was a huge issue for me when i did my crappy laptop video it like i didn't have enough footage to cut to and i kept trying to shoot more and i just didn't really i just couldn't get enough i wasn't laptops are less dynamic than a car yeah like because what the car things shoot to is they just shoot to pictures of the car driving and i find like when i'm i was so much more conscious of it after watching casey's video that i was like scrutinizing all these other because i do watch a lot of car reviews on youtube like how do they do it let me look at it and the thing is
John:
they just show me the car and i'm like every time they show me the car i'm looking at it because it's a moving picture like in the magazine the same way i look at every single picture of like the interior of the car in the magazine and look at the picture of the wheel and i'm always you know pinching to zoom on my paper magazine and it doesn't get any bigger and being frustrated like i
John:
i'm i'm staring at those photos i want to see as much i'm not there at the car you know i don't that the whole point of this video review is i don't have this car i don't even see this car in real life i only see it in the video so i want to see it as many different ways as possible and i have no objection to listening to a personal story unrelated to what i'm seeing on the screen but also seeing this car from a bunch of angles and how it looks and how it sounds and how it feels and
John:
what it's the sound of the blinkers inside what does the parking brake sound like when you pull it up what is it you know all these sorts of things that like you you could shoot and you're like but i don't have any place in the video where i talk about that it's like don't worry just put it in there somewhere i mean you try to make it fit but like you need to feed your eyeballs that's what needs to happen