I Hired Myself
Marco:
The funny thing is, if I cut your Amazon story, we can always refer back to it as, remember Casey's Amazon story?
Marco:
And it'll be like this enigma.
Marco:
No one's ever heard because we won't tell them Casey's Amazon story.
John:
Like Casey's not going to bring it up again the next time he brings something to the lockers.
Marco:
The next time you return a $15 dongle.
Marco:
Exactly.
Marco:
You're spending like two hours of your life to return this $15 thing.
Casey:
It was not two hours, you bastard, but yes, I understand your point.
Marco:
It was two hours of our lives.
Marco:
That's true.
John:
That is accurate.
John:
That is accurate.
John:
Now everything's changed and now it's going to be all screwed up.
Casey:
I blame you.
Casey:
What's your middle name?
Casey:
Charles?
Casey:
Chester?
Casey:
Casey?
Casey:
No, Craig.
Casey:
No, really.
Casey:
What is it?
Casey:
John Craig.
Casey:
Come on.
Casey:
Marco got it.
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
I didn't know.
Casey:
I couldn't tell if you were trolling me and that was a Federici joke.
Casey:
I know how to pronounce it.
Casey:
I know what the middle name is.
Casey:
Boom.
Casey:
I'm the better friend.
Casey:
Just like that.
Casey:
Just like that.
Casey:
Well, now that we've got that sorted, no, anyway, John Craig Syracuse, you need to grow up and get a proper microphone like an adult.
John:
I don't even know.
John:
My levels are all weird.
John:
It's madness over here.
John:
I'm really loud in my own ears.
John:
Who knows what you're going to get here?
Marco:
The only thing you need to know is, A, are you recording, and B, are you clipping?
Marco:
Those are the only concerns I have.
John:
I know.
John:
I can't tell if I'm clipping.
John:
I got the little meter thingies, and they never reach the top.
John:
Does that mean I'm not clipping?
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
Good.
John:
but but can i make them reach the top test test like do they turn red if it clips uh so which are you are you talking about the meters that are in audio hijack peak slash rms it's the box right next to the input and and i little white bars are hanging i mean can i get them to go i don't know you hello i can't get them to touch the top good you're they don't turn red they they stay orange the whole time then you're not clipping
John:
But those claps should have pushed it up.
Casey:
Does that do?
Casey:
That was me that time.
Casey:
That was me that time.
Casey:
And I saw a little red on my physical hardware.
John:
They do not turn red.
Casey:
This is the best episode ever.
John:
No, I'm clapping by the microphone.
John:
They don't turn red.
Marco:
We'll just have to keep you nice and calm so your voice doesn't get raised.
Marco:
We'll see.
John:
We'll see how that goes.
Marco:
Hey, fuck the Mac Pro.
Marco:
Man, you know what?
Marco:
I love maximizing all my windows.
Casey:
Spaces is the one true way.
Casey:
Actually, I really do think that's true.
Casey:
But, wait, John, are you a VI or Emacs guy?
Casey:
I don't even remember.
John:
I bet Marco knows.
Casey:
Hmm.
Casey:
You know what?
John:
Oh, no, he's being tested.
John:
That's my middle name.
Marco:
Doesn't know if I'm... No, yeah, so now, wait, I'm going to try to guess.
Marco:
I'm very disappointed.
Marco:
I'm going to guess because John is old and picky, I'm going to guess Emacs.
John:
Why does that connect with old and picky?
John:
Is that right?
John:
I'm interested in your reasoning.
John:
Why is old and picky equal to Emacs?
John:
I mean, it's just usually.
John:
Like, is Emacs older than VI?
Marco:
I don't think it is.
Marco:
Probably not, but I think its demographic is.
John:
so was i right i'm emacs i've talked about in a million podcasts that you've all heard yes you just don't remember they've never never wavering i actually agree with you i think it's emacs all the way but i am surprised that a man of your pickiness thinks the vi is is not better you guys are nuts
Casey:
I think anyone who enjoys VI is a true-to-form animal.
Casey:
What kind of monster would enjoy using VI?
Marco:
I wouldn't say I enjoy it.
Marco:
I would say I hate it less than I hate Emacs.
Casey:
Anyway, we should move on.
Casey:
Who ordered a HomePod?
Casey:
Because I believe all of us were pretty tepid about it, weren't we?
Casey:
So did either of you guys order a HomePod?
Casey:
I will tell you that I did not.
Marco:
I mean, we know John probably didn't, right?
Casey:
No, John hates spending money, so of course he didn't.
Marco:
I did not.
Marco:
I didn't even think about ordering an iPod.
Marco:
Well, we have now made show history.
Marco:
None of the three of us ordered the brand new Apple product.
Casey:
Wow, we're terrible at this.
Casey:
I'm really disappointed in us.
Marco:
I covered most of it last week, but as the pre-order period passed and went, and as some people are having those hour-long sample tests with them and PR and everything, it sounds like, okay, they focused on their strengths, they focused on the audio engineering side, their weaknesses...
Marco:
Things like the home assistant area and the low-cost area, they didn't focus on their weak sides, which is probably smart.
Marco:
But they ended up making a product that I don't think I have not only a need for, but I don't even think I have a place in my house where it could go that would make sense.
Marco:
It can't go in my living room because only the TV speakers serve that.
Marco:
And it can't be my TV speakers.
Marco:
And I also don't want it to be my TV speakers.
Marco:
I have nice TV speakers already.
Marco:
It can't go in the kitchen because the assistant part of it is not good enough.
Marco:
Frankly, it's just not good enough.
Marco:
The things we do most often, things like timers on the Amazon Echo.
Marco:
The Amazon Echo has really good timers now.
Marco:
You can name them.
Marco:
You can have multiple timers running at once.
Marco:
So you can say, hey, Amazon thing, set an oven timer for 14 minutes.
Marco:
Hey, Amazon thing, set or rotate the thing in the oven timer for seven minutes.
Marco:
You can stack them up like that, and you can have...
Marco:
When you're cooking and when you have multiple things going, it's a lifesaver.
Marco:
And then it beeps and tells you your rotate oven timer is done.
Marco:
It's so convenient and pretty advanced these days.
Marco:
The Siri functionality on the HomePod, if it's anything like other Siri functionality, it's not going to be good at that kind of stuff.
Marco:
It might be able to do a little bit of it.
Marco:
And I think we know that it can do one timer.
Marco:
Because the iPhone can't even do multiple timers or named timers.
Marco:
Like, Siri on the phone can't even do that.
Marco:
So I don't expect, you know, Siri on the HomePod to be that much better in that regard.
Marco:
So it seems like this is really just focused on music.
Marco:
But it's music only with these restrictions and only for certain environments.
Marco:
And there's nowhere in my house that I listen to music...
Marco:
that either doesn't require the more advanced home assistant functionality of the Echo in the kitchen, or doesn't have requirements the HomePod can't satisfy, like in my living room.
Marco:
We don't listen to music in the bedrooms upstairs.
Marco:
In my office, I listen to music mostly on headphones, and when I do use my speakers, it's because I need to play music from my computer, which the HomePod can't do.
Marco:
Even if I had one, I don't even know where I would put it in my house.
Marco:
So yeah, I just I passed and it feels really weird for a major Apple product launch to go by that I'm not buying and I'm not really excited about.
Marco:
But this product is just so boxed in and what it serves and what it's good at and what it can't do that it just it boxed itself right out of my life.
John:
Well, it has competitors.
John:
If you didn't have any Amazon stuff, you probably would have bought this because you'd be like, oh, I've been meaning to try these cylinder things and here's an Apple one, so I'll try it.
Casey:
I don't have any Amazon stuff.
Casey:
Not you, Marco.
Casey:
I'm just saying.
Casey:
I am that person.
John:
Yeah, no, you are anti-cylinder entirely, so you're just continuing your cylinder boycott.
John:
But I was like, Marco totally would have bought this if he didn't already have a product that he liked better.
John:
Because he still would have been at the point of like, I don't know about these cylinders, whatever.
John:
And then eventually Apple would come out with them and he would have tried it.
Marco:
Well, I don't even have the very common excuse of, I need this for testing my app.
Marco:
Because my app can't do anything with the HomePod.
Marco:
Until Siri has...
Marco:
basically like audio app support, which, as I mentioned last episode, I'm not expecting that to happen anytime soon because that would also enable Spotify and other services like that.
Marco:
And so, you know, it's possible, as we mentioned last WWDC, when SiriKit updates came and went and there was no audio thing, it's possible they just haven't gotten to it yet and that they do intend to do it at some point later.
Marco:
I would say this summer, this WWDC is kind of like the do or die point here.
Marco:
Like if they don't add some kind of music app support this summer,
Marco:
I think it becomes increasingly likely that the explanation is they don't want to do it for competitive reasons, which is not good.
Marco:
I really hope that isn't what's happening.
Marco:
But right now, I don't even have anything meaningful to test with Overcast on the HomePod because AirPlay 2 isn't done yet.
John:
You had a bunch of good ideas in Slack.
John:
Remind me in Overcast to play the latest ATP.
John:
Yeah, right.
John:
I can make Overcast a to-do app.
John:
Can you make Overcast a workout app and a to-do app and a reminder app?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
That would be funny to attempt that, but it would be not only clumsy, but there's no way Apple would let that stand for more than a week.
Marco:
That would be a waste.
Marco:
But I just...
Marco:
There's nothing for me to do with the HomePod.
Marco:
I suppose it's healthy for me as a human being to not just buy every product Apple releases, but it just feels weird that there's this major launch and none of us are buying it.
John:
I think I actually have a place in my house where I could put this because in the living room, I have a free Google Home Mini thing that I got.
John:
It came free with some other thing, which is convenient and makes it so you can ask questions and
John:
Kids can ask how to spell words or define things and stuff like that, but you can't play any music on it because it's, you know, it's the mini and it sounds like a tinny little speaker.
John:
And I do have my speakers stuck up to my TV, but there's no way to talk to them and they're mostly turned off all the time unless someone's watching TV and really they're not ideal for music anyway.
John:
So if I had a nice like speaker thing that could fill the room with sound,
John:
which is what this thing could do.
John:
And I could talk to it.
John:
Um, there is a place for that in my life.
John:
And I would just, you know, stick it in my living room and I have an easier way to fill the living room with much better sounding sound than the Google home mini thing can provide.
John:
But I, my, it doesn't, you know, I don't like the idea that it would be tied to my Apple ID.
John:
And I don't like the idea that I could talk to it, but not well.
John:
And so I'm taking a wait and see, like,
John:
Eventually, when the software catches up and it supports multiple people and it can understand who's talking to it and it can connect to both my phone and my wife's phone.
John:
Eventually, when the software catches up, I probably will buy one of these to fill exactly that function to basically fill my living room with better sounding sound.
John:
I don't know if it'll ever get to the point, though, where I can talk to it and have it play like any song because I subscribe to Google Play Music and I don't see myself subscribing to Apple Music just to be able to talk to this speaker because I have to subscribe to Google Play Music to get no ads on YouTube because of the way Google structures things.
John:
If Google ever changes its...
John:
youtube red whatever family plan thing that i get so that i don't have to play for google play music anymore but i can still the whole family can still be ad free on youtube then i would probably subscribe to apple music and try it but for now i'm just kind of stuck in this you know this weirdly carved out problem space of streaming service and ad free youtube and uh you know and this capabilities of the homepod
Casey:
I'm a devout Spotify user.
Casey:
Here's other music that we think you would enjoy.
Casey:
And that comes out on Mondays.
Casey:
And then on Fridays, there's Release Radar, which is similar but limited to just new or new-ish releases.
Casey:
So here's something that's brand new that just entered Spotify and we think you might enjoy.
Casey:
And those two playlists are tremendous.
Casey:
And I love them.
Casey:
And beyond that, Spotify is a couple of really great apps.
Casey:
It is one of the few apps that is Electron or equivalent that doesn't remind me of that every time I use it, unlike Slack.
Casey:
And on the iPhone, it's a really great app.
Casey:
And what's wonderful about it is if I accidentally, as I often do, leave Spotify open everywhere...
Casey:
Any Spotify client that is signed in as the same Spotify user can control any other Spotify client.
Casey:
So I could control my phone from my computer or vice versa.
Casey:
And that becomes useful if you're air playing to something else.
Casey:
That's awesome.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So I could have my phone air playing to my Apple TV, but control it from my computer if my computer happens to be right in front of it, whatever the case may be.
Casey:
So like I said, I have not tried Apple Music in a while, but there's a lot to love about Spotify.
Casey:
And I've been a loyal Spotify user since it came to the United States.
Casey:
And I've been paying for it since it came to the United States.
Casey:
So if the HomePod supported Spotify, like if I could say, you know, Cylinder, play such and such on Spotify, I think there's a pretty darn good chance I would be getting one, what is it, a week from Friday?
Casey:
And I probably would have pre-ordered it.
Casey:
But given that it is tied to Apple Music, and right now I don't particularly care for Apple Music...
Casey:
This is kind of a non-starter to me.
Casey:
And it's really unfortunate because I've been thinking about this a lot.
Casey:
And we'll talk about it, I think, over the next couple of weeks because I have a few topics, some of which we may not get to this week to discuss this.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
I don't like that whole Google mantra, especially from years ago, of like, oh, we're open, we're open, and we do things because we're open, and you can do whatever you want with our stuff because we're open.
Casey:
Open for open's sake is just cheesy, and I don't really care.
Marco:
Also, in Google's case, they're often using it as a total marketing BS thing.
Marco:
There's open, and then there's Google, and those occasionally intersect a little bit, but they're not usually that intersecting.
Casey:
Yeah, I completely agree with you.
Casey:
But this is a case where this sort of gated community really bums me out that I can't use the music streaming platform that I prefer to...
Casey:
with the physical speaker that I would probably really love.
Casey:
I am so far behind on podcasts.
Casey:
I haven't listened to, what was it, Query that was on Relay that had Serendi Caldwell discussing her experience with HomePod.
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
I think I have that right.
Casey:
Well, whatever it is, I'll put a link in the show notes.
Casey:
And so I haven't listened to that yet, but I'm really looking forward to it.
Casey:
Yes, query number 23.
Casey:
I'll put it in the show notes.
Casey:
And Serenity Caldwell was able to get some hands-on time with the HomePod and apparently spent basically an hour discussing it on this episode of Query, which is a really great podcast with Stephen Hackett.
Casey:
So I haven't had a chance to listen to that.
Casey:
All I've heard through the grapevine from the little I've been paying attention to is that the HomePod really does sound really great.
Casey:
And you know what?
Casey:
That sounds good to me.
Casey:
Pardon the pun, but that sounds good.
Casey:
I could see me putting this in my living room, even as a redundant set of speakers, just because I could see screaming across the room, hey, Cylinder, play the latest album by Radiohead on Spotify or something like that.
Casey:
And that would be pretty awesome.
Casey:
One of my favorite things about the brief window of time I used Apple Music was being able to use Siri with it, especially on my phone.
Casey:
But because this is a walled garden that Spotify isn't allowed in, and actually to that end, Overcast isn't either in terms of Siri support, this is a non-starter to me.
Casey:
I'm just not interested in it.
Casey:
And that kind of bums me out because...
Casey:
Which is stupid, right?
Casey:
It booms me out that I can't send some faceless corporation another $350 of my money.
Casey:
That's so dumb.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
A few years ago, I would be excited about this sort of thing.
Casey:
And now I'm kind of like, huh, that's too bad.
Casey:
I wish I could get excited about this, but I can't.
Casey:
And I know that there's some capitalism, like capitalism sucks and stuff is evil, etc., etc.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
This is just a silly thing that used to make me happy.
Casey:
And a new Apple thing used to always make me happy.
Casey:
Even when I claimed it wouldn't, it inevitably did.
Casey:
And maybe that'll be the case here too.
Casey:
Who knows?
Casey:
But I don't know, man.
Casey:
I'm just bummed because I want to be excited about it and I just can't bring myself to.
John:
You know, I'm thinking about this.
John:
I think...
John:
i guess we're all on the same page but um i guess we all don't like music as much as we like television and movies because all of us wait what multiple all of us subscribe to multiple streaming services right for for video like we all subscribe to netflix right
John:
yep how many people subscribe to something else besides netflix i have hbo whatever right and casey anything else besides netflix uh netflix so recurring subscriptions are netflix and spotify and i think that's it for us maybe case is an even footing but marco's got twice as many video as audio services granted it's just two to one
John:
I have like seven times as many video audio services.
Marco:
Wait, nope, you're wrong.
Marco:
I subscribe to Apple Music and Amazon Music whatever on the Echo.
Marco:
Ah.
Marco:
So I'm tied.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
But I think it's different because like with streaming services, I think you have way lower of a percentage of overlap.
Marco:
If you look at like the Venn diagram of each one's catalogs,
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Video streaming services.
Marco:
I feel like there's a lot less overlap between each one's music streaming services.
Marco:
The overlap of those Venn diagram circles of what they have is like almost identical.
Marco:
It's like almost completely on top of each other.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
You don't feel like you're getting anything extra.
Marco:
I mean, yeah, it feels redundant to pay for multiple music services, whereas it doesn't feel redundant to pay for multiple streaming services that have different content on them.
John:
Yeah, I suppose.
John:
Although, there's probably lots of exclusive content.
John:
We just don't know what it is.
John:
Because, you know, maybe you're into classical music and maybe one has, like, all the classical music and the other one has crap.
John:
None of them have fish.
John:
You know, foreign music.
John:
None of them have fish, right?
John:
But if one of them did, that would be a differentiator.
Casey:
Well, no, no.
Casey:
I think Spotify has a fair bit of fish, doesn't it?
Marco:
Yeah, but not all the live shows.
Marco:
Actually, Live Fish has their own app.
Marco:
Oh, there you go.
Marco:
I think their own streaming service that has all the stuff.
Yeah.
John:
Well, anyway, what I'm getting at is, like, why is it I play for Google Play and I won't play for Apple Music?
John:
Part of it might be the overlap, but, like, I don't have that problem in video.
John:
There's a lot of overlap in the video services.
John:
But when I envision the video services, it's like, look, the only reason I'm subscribing to the CBS thing is for the one Star Trek show.
John:
Like, in the worst case scenario, it's like I'm literally subscribing for a single show because it's the only place I can get it.
John:
It's 100% exclusive, right?
John:
And these video services pay to have exclusive content created for them.
John:
That's what brings me to them.
John:
At this point, I'm no longer subscribed to Netflix to see a bunch of their back catalog of movies.
John:
It's purely for original Netflix series.
John:
We don't have that in the music space.
John:
But anyway, what I'm getting is I'm paying tens of dollars for all these services every single month, and it doesn't bother me, but...
John:
also paying for apple music just feels like meh and i think mostly for me anyway it's because i i watch much more television movies than i listen to music because there's a fact right i mean and even in scenarios where i would be listening to music i'm mostly listening to podcasts which you know so what does all this say that i don't think the cylinder market is uniquely hosed it is hosed in very similar ways to the sort of uh the balkanized uh video market
John:
It's just that the video market, I guess, feels better because of the original content.
John:
Although it doesn't feel great.
John:
I mean, I resist adding up exactly how much money I'm paying every month for all my video services because I think it's a pretty big number.
Marco:
Going back one more minute to what you said a few minutes ago, Casey, about the kind of feeling of openness that you want or seek from this product that you can't get.
Marco:
So for reasons I'll get into later in the show, I've kind of been thinking similar lines recently or having similar sensibility.
Marco:
And the fact that the HomePod has no equivalent to basically a line-in port, like maybe AirPlay 1 might be that equivalent, but basically it has no line-in port.
Marco:
And this, I feel like, limits its lifetime in a way that people who buy speakers, I think, are going to be disappointed with this long term.
Marco:
Like, if you look at the iPod Hi-Fi, the famous flop Apple product.
Marco:
Well, you know what?
Marco:
The iPod Hi-Fi, for the very few people who spent the crazy amount of money to buy it, which actually I think was $400, right?
Marco:
It's not that different from the price of the HomePod.
Marco:
I think it was exactly the same price as the HomePod, wasn't it?
Marco:
$349?
Marco:
Maybe.
Marco:
Anyway.
Casey:
It was $350, by the way.
Marco:
Okay, yeah, so there you go.
Marco:
But for the few people who bought those or who got them later off eBay as a joke, I know Jason Snell and Stephen Hackett both have them, and they both still use them.
Marco:
Now, the iPod Hi-Fi, the main input was an iPod 30-pin dot connector on the top, but it also had a line-in port on the back.
Marco:
And so this speaker that, by all accounts, is actually a pretty decent speaker is still useful today.
Marco:
What is it, a decade after it came out?
Marco:
Something like that.
Marco:
So, like, it's still useful today because it's just a good speaker.
Marco:
And good speakers don't go out of date.
Marco:
Good speakers are always good speakers.
Marco:
I mean, eventually, maybe the cones could rock, but it takes a very long time.
Marco:
Like, a good speaker is useful way beyond the lifetime of a typical tech gadget.
Marco:
And people who buy good speakers and who value good speakers know this because every good speaker they ever bought has been this way.
Marco:
And, you know, Casey, like, you know, your your parents and, you know, and my parents were both like, you know, super into music and hi-fi systems.
Marco:
And, you know, we both grew up listening to speaker systems that were decades old.
Marco:
And, you know, many of those components still work today, decades later.
Casey:
That's exactly true.
Casey:
So my dad's fancy, fancy, fancy stereo is 15, 20 years old at this point.
Casey:
And I know he has teal loudspeakers.
Casey:
Now I'm having second thoughts.
Casey:
I'm pretty sure he has teal loudspeakers.
Casey:
There's a second set of speakers, a second stereo in his house that is like that.
Casey:
I believe they're Dahlquist's.
Casey:
And I am almost sure he had those in his dorm room when he was a kid.
Casey:
And my dad is 60 and change.
Casey:
And he was in college when he was like 20.
Casey:
So to your point, I think you might have had to replace a cone here or there or something like that.
Casey:
But I 150% agree with what you're driving at, that good speakers can last not literally forever, but effectively freaking forever.
Marco:
Yeah, in the tech world, they last forever, relative to other products that we use.
Marco:
And so the iPod Hi-Fi, this speaker that came out forever ago and was a flop, is still totally functional today for the few people who have them because it had a line in jack.
Marco:
It has this escape valve that this future-proofs this thing for a very long time.
Marco:
And the HomePod...
Marco:
I understand why Apple's positioning it so much as a good speaker, because that's playing to its strengths and trying to position it away from Apple's weaknesses in this product.
Marco:
That's good.
Marco:
But a good speaker is expected to last and to be useful.
Marco:
If you're going to be spending $350 for a good speaker, and that's just for one, by the way.
Marco:
I think a lot of people are going to end up wanting two for the way it fills larger rooms better.
Marco:
If you're going to be spending this kind of money,
Marco:
on a speaker, it is convention in the industry that that speaker lasts.
Marco:
And it doesn't have to last 50 years.
Marco:
I understand there's complex processors going in there and lots of different tweeters and everything like that.
Marco:
So it's more complex than most speakers.
Marco:
But if this thing is a flop, there's no guarantee that it will be, but I'm just saying if this thing is a flop and support for it dwindles in the software over the next five, ten years, whatever, if you have one of these, ten years from now, if it has a line import, you can still use it.
Marco:
But if the software ecosystem dries up or moves on, this thing is now useless.
Marco:
And I understand a lot of tech products are this way now.
Marco:
This is honestly how much of Sonos has operated.
Marco:
In fact, almost all of Sonos works this way.
Marco:
And that's one of the reasons why I kind of don't like it.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It just kind of rubs me the wrong way that this product is so dependent on its internet connection, the Siri service backing it up, and the proprietary AirPlay protocol and things like that, that it makes it really hard to envision this thing being useful in 10 years.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And to that end, it's super surprising to me, like you were saying, that there's no just like input jack anywhere on here.
Casey:
And I'm looking at the HomePod specs and it says, where is this?
Casey:
It says, shoot, I just lost it.
Casey:
La, la, la, la, la.
Casey:
Audio sources.
Casey:
There we go.
Casey:
It says Apple Music, iTunes Music Purchases, iCloud Music Library with an Apple Music or iTunes Match subscription, which, by the way, is very cool.
Casey:
I'm glad that iTunes Match is supported because I do still subscribe to that.
Casey:
Oh, I guess that is another audio service to John's point earlier.
Casey:
Anyway, Beats One Live Radio.
Casey:
What is it always on worldwide?
Casey:
That's still on.
Casey:
I think.
Casey:
Podcasts.
Casey:
Worldwide.
Casey:
Worldwide.
Casey:
AirPlay, other content to HomePod from iPhone, iPad, iPod Touch, Apple TV, and Mac.
Casey:
You'll note that Bluetooth is not listed in the audio sources section.
Casey:
However, in the wireless section, it lists 802.11ac, Wi-Fi with MIMO, direct guest access, whatever the crap that means, and Bluetooth 5.0.
Casey:
So I don't know if Bluetooth is supported or not.
Casey:
And again, I apologize if I should know this, but I have not had time to read up on any of this stuff lately.
Casey:
But it is quite possible that, to your point, Marco, AirPlay is the only way to get, quote-unquote, other audio into this thing.
Casey:
And that just, and I love AirPlay.
Casey:
Like, it has its problems, don't get me wrong, but I love AirPlay.
Casey:
I use AirPlay all the time, oftentimes streaming Spotify to my Apple TV, because it would be great if Spotify made a friggin' Apple TV app, but that's a different issue.
Casey:
anyway i like airplay i think airplay works great and that seems to be the only mechanism to get other audio in here which i agree with you marco is kind of bananas because you you would think like at least give us a little like what is it an rca jack or like a headphone jack what you know what i'm thinking of but what is the either an eight thing stereo headphone jack or a or a pair of rca plugs
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Casey:
That would dramatically increase the usefulness of this thing, in my personal opinion.
Casey:
And here again, I think it's a bit of a stretch for me to say what I'm about to say, but here's another quote-unquote open issue.
Casey:
Maybe openness is a poor choice of words.
Casey:
Maybe flexibility is a better word.
Casey:
If this was designed to be more flexible...
Casey:
then it may have some mechanism of physical audio input.
Casey:
Maybe it would have more software support for Spotify or frigging Overcast or Pocketcast, whatever.
Casey:
I don't care if Overcast isn't your podcasting platform of choice.
Casey:
I do.
Casey:
fair you know what i mean though like anything it would be god it's just so frustrating because i feel like this is right up my alley as someone who has music playing in the house almost always and i really mean that like i if silence just freaks me out i have to have music playing when i'm when i'm in the house just playing with deckland or whatever i constantly have my my stereo the my like home theater if you will stereo on playing some sort of music and
Casey:
This would be perfect for me if I could get music into it from some mechanism other than airplay.
Casey:
And I guess maybe the adult answer, if you will, is, well, you're airplaying to your Apple TV a lot of the time anyway, so who cares?
Casey:
Grow up.
Casey:
But, I don't know, it's just so frustrating that it doesn't have to be that way.
Marco:
No, that's not a good answer.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
Exactly.
Casey:
It doesn't feel right to me.
Casey:
Why would I spend $350 to do something I'm already doing?
Marco:
And also AirPlay is limited.
Marco:
As I mentioned last episode, AirPlay has certain latency in different scenarios.
Marco:
Even AirPlay 2 is going to have latency.
Marco:
Apple TV is going to be able to work with it by compensating for that and delaying the video stream so it catches up with the audio properly.
Marco:
But, you know, any other thing sent into it might not.
Marco:
And so, you know, if your answer here is AirPlay or even Bluetooth, which also has some latency, you know, that rules out things like using it as TV speakers for a lot of people's setups.
Marco:
It rules out, you know, future audio components you might want to connect to it.
Marco:
Like, honestly, I know this is not something Apple would want to enable, but like, if you really liked the Amazon Echo service and wanted to buy a HomePod for its audio, if it had a line in, you could plug an Echo dot to it and have it
Marco:
and have it be like have it receive audio from my word that's something that I would actually consider that for my kitchen like that's actually something like people could do and I know Apple's not going to try to enable it for reasons like that but like they would probably sell more and it's just again like it's the audio world I feel like and this is kind of a larger tech problem like you know Apple talks so much about their environmental responsibility and everything but they sure make a lot of really limited disposable devices
John:
They're recyclable.
John:
You know, I don't know, since none of us have this, since we failed as a group to buy one, I don't know if it works as a plain old Bluetooth speaker, but imagine if Amazon ships the Dot with Bluetooth and then the Dot can use the HomePod as a Bluetooth speaker.
Marco:
By the way, all Amazon Echoes can already do that, including the dots.
Marco:
But as far as we know, the HomePod can't take Bluetooth input as a speaker.
Marco:
The Bluetooth is there, but it seems like it's there just for its own private use.
Casey:
It does seem like...
Marco:
perhaps oh yeah actually I bet you're right it's probably for the phone call profile but like you know Bluetooth it exposes certain profiles and there's some for phone calls there's some for being speakers for music and from what we know so far it does not expose the A2DP protocol for music or whatever the more modern ones are so it doesn't it doesn't seem from what we know so far that it is capable of being a Bluetooth speaker you know
Marco:
by itself seems like you have to buy one to find out chat room hasn't said either way no one in the chat room bought one either we failed as a collective here well nobody has them yet yeah i guess when are they supposed to come in the ninth or something i'm pretty sure during the hour-long demo at apple pr that some people had they probably didn't want you to like pair your phone to it to see if it could run as a bluetooth speaker yeah oh let me i'll bring an echo in and we can see if the echo compared to it yeah another point about this is you know all of us are asking for like line in or rca or
John:
you know basically a wire connected to the thing but it could be that the ubiquity of bluetooth just washes over the entire industry and having bluetooth is becomes the equivalent of having a line in for most people like not high-end audio people because i would say you know
John:
350 is expensive but it's not high-end audio expensive right no no it's it's high-end audio and mid-range i don't know if it's even mid-range i guess when you have two of them maybe it's mid-range but well okay in audio there's like there's three prices that everything is either nothing three hundred dollars or fifty thousand dollars like that's that's roughly the classes here yeah so anyway i well it could be that we're just behind the market and and
John:
having the ability to take Bluetooth input is sufficient for everybody.
John:
In fact, it's what people want.
John:
And then we'll just have to find out whether this thing can take Bluetooth input.
John:
Also, getting back to the hardware thing, if it doesn't take Bluetooth input now, as long as the hardware is there, there's no reason they can't change that later.
John:
And then you can have your Echo Dot talking to
Marco:
uh your home pod scenario in your kitchen yeah maybe i mean that would be nice to have just to have options like that like i know that's a ridiculous thing but although i would probably actually i really would put a little dot on top of it well that would cover up the little screen on it but yeah like it just like again it's you know case you mentioned earlier flexibility i i would i would maybe use the word versatility like it's
Marco:
There are so many more scenarios in which the HomePod could be useful or could be compelling if it had just one or two of these walls knocked down a little bit.
Marco:
But yeah, over time, maybe it will.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
We were sponsored this week by Hover, a great way to buy and manage domain names.
Marco:
Go to hover.com slash ATP, and you can get 10% off any domain purchase.
Marco:
These days, who doesn't need a domain?
Marco:
Pretty much everyone needs them.
Marco:
It feels like everyone has them.
Marco:
And so it's important that yours stands out.
Marco:
Hover has over 400 domain extensions to choose from to help you brand yourself online and to help you find a great name for yourself.
Marco:
And a lot of these, if I'm honest, they're a little bit weird or a little bit goofy because they're like big long words that are a little too specific.
Marco:
So things like .pizza or .diamonds or .plumbing.
Marco:
Most of them aren't that useful.
Marco:
But there are some that are short and generic enough that it doesn't take away from your branding.
Marco:
It actually can add to it.
Marco:
And one of these, I think one of the best ones, is .me.
Marco:
And Hover's running a great deal for .me.
Marco:
.me is a really good domain now for using especially a portfolio site or something that showcases who you are and what you do.
Marco:
So if you have one of these sites ready to go, get yourself a .me extension.
Marco:
And if you've never used Hover before, you're in luck.
Marco:
It's really great.
Marco:
And you can get an additional 10% off any domain extensions offered for your entire first year.
Marco:
So check it out today at hover.com slash ATP.
Marco:
See these great deals.
Marco:
Check out a .me extension especially.
Marco:
And if you don't want that, there's tons of other ones too.
Marco:
It is really great.
Marco:
I use Hover for...
Marco:
more than half of my domains now and all my new domain purchases and it's wonderful it's just so pleasant to use it's well designed it's very respectful of your time your attention your privacy and your budget and it's a great place to go if you for any domain names but especially the dot me extension right now so check it out today get your portfolio up and running on a dot me extension or whatever else you might need from a domain name hover.com slash atp and get 10 off any domain name purchase thank you so much to hover for sponsoring our show uh
Casey:
I want to tell a short story that is really an excuse to talk about a shopping experience I just had.
Casey:
So I have my MacBook Adorable and I have a USB-C to Ethernet adapter that also has three traditional USB ports on it.
Casey:
And it's a little bit physically large.
Casey:
But the problem is, because I have a MacBook Adorable that only has one port, which usually doesn't bother me, but occasionally does, let's say I wanted to do an initial time machine backup, which can take hours.
Casey:
Then I would have to make sure that I can do that before my battery depletes because this Ethernet adapter does not have USB-C in.
Casey:
So I have no mechanism by which I can power my laptop while I'm using Ethernet, which normally is not that big a deal, but it's sometimes frustrating, right?
Casey:
Well, I also have a knockoff version of the Apple, I forget the official term for it, but the Apple adapter that has HDMI USB-C in to provide power and a single USB, you know, traditional USB 3.0 port.
Marco:
Yes, the $80 middle finger from Apple.
Casey:
Yeah, well, I think I got mine for like $15 or $20 or something like that.
Casey:
I'll put a link in the show notes.
Marco:
Of course, I paid $80 for mine.
Casey:
Well, right, because I think I got mine for Monoprice or something like that.
Casey:
Again, I'll have to dig it up.
Casey:
I don't remember offhand, but I've never had a problem with it.
Casey:
It works great, and it was a heck of a lot less than $80.
Casey:
So it occurred to me this, you know, HDMI thinger that, again, has HDMI, USB-C, and traditional USB, that's actually a really nice way to add a single USB port while maintaining power.
Casey:
So you know what I should do?
Casey:
I should get a USB Ethernet adapter.
Casey:
And this way, if I do have a long-running operation, like a time machine backup...
Casey:
I can plug a, this, you know, the old school USB ethernet adapter into my fancy pants, not, you know, 80, but not actually $80 adapter into the MacBook adorable.
Casey:
So I bought a like $15 ethernet adapter that runs over a USB three.
Casey:
I get it to the house and I bought it from Amazon.
Casey:
I get it to the house.
Casey:
And I did not do my due diligence, and it requires a driver.
Casey:
And that should have been enough to stop me, but I was annoyed, and I was like, well, screw it.
Casey:
It's already here.
Casey:
I don't want to have to return it.
Casey:
So I'll just install this driver.
Casey:
So there I go installing a kernel extension that unequivocally came from China, thinking to myself, this is not a wise choice, but here I am.
Marco:
You're installing a kernel extension for a USB network adapter?
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Exactly.
Marco:
That would have gone right back in the box for me.
Casey:
Well, hold on.
Casey:
I understand that this was a terrible idea.
Casey:
I don't need you to write into me, anyone.
Casey:
I understand.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
I understand China might be looking at every bit of network traffic that ever comes through this computer.
Casey:
I get it.
Marco:
I mean, that's one problem.
Marco:
Also, just, like, your computer's gonna suck now.
Marco:
Like, it's gonna... You're gonna have stability issues.
Marco:
The next OS update's gonna probably break it.
Marco:
Well, so... So many reasons why you should not need this.
Casey:
I am fully aware of all these things.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I was just frustrated and in the heat of the moment, I just went with it.
Casey:
Well, then I do this kernel extension.
Casey:
I try to install this driver.
Casey:
It installs just fine, but I can't maintain a connection for more than like a minute or two.
Casey:
And I decide, you know what?
Casey:
That is definitely not going to work.
Casey:
And even though this thing is only $15, I'm going to have to return it.
Casey:
So I go to return it to Amazon, which I've done like once or twice in the past.
Casey:
But I think it was one of you guys that said this before.
Casey:
Like, it takes a lot for me to return anything, even to like a nameless corporation.
Casey:
It's really bad for me to return something to a retail store.
Casey:
I hate doing that because I just feel like a jerk.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
Even if it's well within my ability.
Casey:
That's not the word I'm looking for.
Casey:
But if it's well within my rights, I guess, for lack of a better word, to return something, I hate doing it.
Casey:
I think, Marco, you've talked about this a lot.
Casey:
And I feel exactly the same way.
Marco:
I mean, honestly, to be fair, like it's so easy to return stuff to Amazon that I do return stuff to Amazon at more of a regular person rate than anything else in my life.
Casey:
There you go.
Casey:
So perfect segue.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
I'll send you a dollar later.
Casey:
So I decide to return this thing to Amazon and I start grumbling to myself because I'm like, oh, now I'm going to have to box it up and then I'm going to have to mail it.
Casey:
And it's going to be a royal pain.
Casey:
But one of the options I had was to return it to an Amazon locker.
Casey:
I thought to myself, you know what?
Casey:
I know there's at least a couple of lockers nearby.
Casey:
Don't be creepy.
Casey:
I'm going to try this.
Casey:
So they say, okay, you can return it to an Amazon locker.
Casey:
Here's what you do.
Casey:
We've given you a PDF that has a hilariously large, like it almost looks like a mailing label.
Casey:
Except there was no postage required because it's going to an Amazon locker.
Casey:
And given that this was a little USB adapter that was probably the size of a deck of cards, like the box of it was roughly the size of a deck of cards, I needed to put it in this hilariously large box just to fit the stupid mailing label on it.
Casey:
But be that as it may, so far so good.
Casey:
So I print that out.
Casey:
I find a much larger box that I should really need.
Casey:
I tape it all.
Casey:
I put it in the box.
Casey:
I tape it all up, blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
And I go to the Amazon locker.
John:
How much did this thing cost again?
John:
Because now you're overrunning my, like, now I need to know a number.
John:
How much did this cost?
John:
Didn't you say $15?
Casey:
It was about $15.
John:
That's way over $15 worth of effort you've already spent.
John:
I feel like I've spent $15 worth of effort listening to this story so far.
Casey:
Well, thanks a lot.
Marco:
Yeah, like, if I had a $15 product that didn't work, I would probably honestly just throw it away.
Marco:
Like, I don't think I would go through this.
Marco:
Yeah, I would just eat that cost.
John:
But anyway, Casey's trying to work the system here.
Casey:
Normally, I would agree.
Casey:
Normally, I would not even think about it, especially since my LLC bought this.
Casey:
So it's like, you know, free money, except not.
Casey:
But whatever.
Marco:
No, that's not how that works.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
But it's how I sometimes think about it.
Casey:
But anyway.
Casey:
You really shouldn't.
Casey:
I know I shouldn't.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Just leave me alone.
Casey:
Okay.
Casey:
Just let me finish.
Casey:
So the point is that I decided to return to this Amazon locker.
Casey:
And I agree with you guys.
Casey:
This was a hilarious amount of effort for something that I should have just thrown in the trash and walked away from.
Casey:
But I was annoyed and I wanted to kind of send this back and say, screw you.
Casey:
This thing was a piece of garbage.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I drive to the Amazon locker and they give you a little code.
Casey:
And so there's a screen in the middle of the lockers and you type in your like six digit or six character code, whatever.
Casey:
And I do that.
Casey:
And then a locker just pops open, which isn't entirely surprising.
Casey:
It was kind of cool to see.
Casey:
And I go to put my hilariously large box in this locker that was about three or maybe three inches tall.
Casey:
And this box was easily six or seven inches.
Casey:
And I look at the box and I look at the locker and I look at the box and I look at the locker and I think, well, crap, this isn't going to go well.
Casey:
And now I'm like, what do I do?
Marco:
you throw it in the trash and you consider this problem gone.
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
Shut up.
Marco:
If you were a real American, you would have made that box thick.
Marco:
Just shove it in there.
Marco:
Just crunch it up.
Marco:
Wait, and why was the box so big for like a little USB dongle thing?
Casey:
Because of the stupid mailing label.
Marco:
Like, because the mailing label was easily like six inches wide for this teeny tiny little... I think what I would have done is just like tape the mailing label around the item itself.
Casey:
I probably should have.
Casey:
With no box.
Marco:
Make the mailing label and tape the box.
Marco:
And
Marco:
And just make sure the barcode is visible somewhere.
Casey:
Well, I was going to say, you're also supposed to put something in like a different barcode in the box just in case.
Casey:
But I agree with you.
Casey:
Anyway, the reason I bring this up, though, is because on the screen there was an option that said, my box is too big.
Casey:
I need a bigger locker, please, or whatever.
Casey:
And so I closed the locker and I hit that button.
Casey:
Or I think I hit the button and then closed the locker.
Casey:
And sure enough, a different one popped open and it fit just fine.
Casey:
And this all happened yesterday.
Casey:
And so then...
Casey:
No, and then I put my box into the locker.
Casey:
I shut the locker.
Casey:
I waited a day and they said they're going to credit my credit card.
Casey:
How cool is that?
Casey:
I just thought that was such a neat experience.
Casey:
And this is like, no, this is so cool.
John:
You're excited about the option to say that your box is too big.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
The fact that there was a locker to give, like, I'm really not messing with you.
Casey:
I realize this is hilarious.
Casey:
I can't believe it took this long to tell that story.
Casey:
This is so awesome.
Casey:
Come on.
Casey:
So here it is, like this establishment that's all in the cloud, if you will, figuratively speaking.
Casey:
It's all in the cloud.
Casey:
There's no real Amazon brick and mortar stores except, yeah, well, actually, whatever, whatever.
Casey:
But the point is...
Casey:
That they just installed.
Casey:
This was like a friggin' Sunoco station that they had this locker at.
Casey:
And I could drive to the Sunoco station, don't be creepy, and I could return my item without having to send anything in the mail, without having to worry about postage, without having to worry about whether or not the mail was open.
Marco:
You know that when you return something, they give you a prepaid UPS label.
Casey:
But then I still would have to bring it to a UPS store or UPS Dropbox.
John:
Let me tell you, the UPS Dropboxes are big enough to accommodate your package.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
First of all, there are tons of UPS stores and Dropboxes everywhere.
Marco:
Second of all, you can also hand it to any UPS driver anywhere.
Marco:
So if you have a UPS driver who comes to your office every day, you can just bring it to work and leave it at the front desk and say, hey, can you give this to the UPS guy?
Marco:
Or if you are at home, like I am, and you see the UPS person either come to your house or go to a neighbor's house, you can walk outside and be like, here you go.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
It's so easy.
John:
Well, I think that second strategy only works for Marco, where the UPS man comes to his house every single day.
Marco:
Exactly.
Casey:
That's exactly right.
Marco:
And he's home all day.
Marco:
You both go to offices where they definitely come every day.
Marco:
They come to every office every day.
Marco:
Also, you have like a month to return it when you do this.
Casey:
Not the Amazon Locker.
Casey:
The Amazon Locker, you have one full business day.
Casey:
Thank you very much.
Marco:
No, but I'm just saying, if you do the UPS prepaid label, which is the option you should always take, they give you like a month to return it.
Marco:
So it doesn't matter if the UPS guy doesn't come to your house every day.
Marco:
If somebody from UPS comes to your house at least once a month, or you can find a Dropbox or pass the UPS store at least once a month,
Casey:
do that it's so i i oh my god i can't believe you spent that much effort but the thing the reason i brought all this up was because i know the reason i brought all this up was not about this particular stupid dongle it was not about you know whether or not this was the most effective way to return this item this is just my first experience with an amazon locker and i thought it was really freaking cool and i could see how having this at like whole foods would be really convenient and
Casey:
And I just thought, and I think that this is a company that really exists only in the ether by most definitions, right?
Casey:
There's magic wherein, you know, I click some buttons on my keyboard and my mouse, then something suddenly shows up at my house.
Casey:
And I have no mechanism wherein I can physically take something and return it to them.
Casey:
Like, yes, I understand what you just said, Marco.
Marco:
I get it.
Marco:
It's the same way it got there.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
I get it.
Casey:
But I understand.
Casey:
But, like, I just thought that this was really freaking cool.
Casey:
And...
Casey:
Yes, I understand.
Casey:
Okay, you can nitpick everything I just said.
Casey:
Yes, there's a local Amazon warehouse.
Casey:
But no, I couldn't have brought it there.
Casey:
Yes, I can take it to UBS.
Casey:
That's true.
Casey:
But I just thought that this was a really neat halfway and a really neat way to give themselves a foothold geographically without having to have a full-on brick-and-mortar store.
Casey:
And if you end up cutting this from the released episode, fine.
Casey:
I just feel like it's really cool.
Casey:
And after all the moaning and complaining we all did about the HomePod...
Casey:
I thought we would like a nice story.
Casey:
And this, to me, was a nice story.
John:
So you're going to try that Amazon key thing next where you let Amazon open the door to your house and go inside?
Casey:
No, sir.
John:
No, no, no.
John:
That's the next step.
John:
Could be neat.
John:
Just try it.
John:
You're installing kecks from China on your laptop.
John:
Why not allow Amazon into your house?
John:
Yes, yes, yes.
Marco:
Here we go.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Fracture, who prints beautiful looking photos directly onto glass.
Marco:
Visit Fracture.me and save 15% off your first order with code ATP17.
Marco:
We have Fracture prints all over our house.
Marco:
Now we also have other, we have like, you know, frame pictures and posters here and there.
Marco:
No one ever mentions those at all.
Marco:
The fracture prints, those get tons of compliments and people asking, ooh, what's this?
Marco:
Because it just looks great.
Marco:
The pictures go edge to edge, this sleek, frameless glass design.
Marco:
It's just, it's awesome.
Marco:
It looks clean and modern, but without looking too minimal or cold or anything.
Marco:
It's just a really nice look.
Marco:
It goes with pretty much any decor.
Marco:
They also make wonderful gifts because you can really preserve a photo in a way that might be meaningful to somebody, say maybe a parent or grandparent or some friends if there's something meaningful between you.
Marco:
Fractures look great.
Marco:
They're easy to order.
Marco:
They're easy to get.
Marco:
They come very securely packed.
Marco:
I've never had one arrive broken.
Marco:
And all fractures are handmade in Gainesville, Florida from U.S.
Marco:
source materials in a carbon neutral green factory.
Marco:
It's a wonderful company to deal with.
Marco:
It's a wonderful product that you get, and you can really make people feel great with fractures.
Marco:
I highly suggest them.
Marco:
Everyone I've ever gotten them for has loved them.
Marco:
We loved ours, and they're just wonderful prints.
Marco:
Any photo you want to get preserved, print it on a fracture, and it's just awesome.
Marco:
So check it out today at fracture.me.
Marco:
Get your own photos printed in amazing vivid color directly on pieces of glass.
Marco:
You will love them.
Marco:
Your guests will love them.
Marco:
And hopefully if you give them as gifts, your loved ones will love them too.
Marco:
Fracture.me.
Marco:
Get 15% off your first order with code ATP17.
Marco:
They will ask you what podcast you heard about them from.
Marco:
Make sure to tell them ATP.
Marco:
It helps support the show.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Fracture for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
So I wrote a Mac app over the last couple of weeks.
Marco:
Yeah, last week you told us a little bit, you kind of teased it a little bit.
Marco:
It was for photo management, right?
Casey:
Yeah, that's right.
Casey:
So here's the situation.
Casey:
Quick recap.
Casey:
Dr. Drang had written a, or maybe he had fixed or otherwise tweaked a series of scripts.
Casey:
I'm not sure what Genesis was.
Casey:
But he had written or tweaked or whatever, a bunch of Python scripts to do some basic rearranging of files as after he like imports them.
Casey:
So the idea is, and here's how I used it.
Casey:
So the idea is I have a single folder that has a shed load of files, be that from the iPhone, be that from my physical camera or my big camera, whatever.
Casey:
But I want them all to be filed away in folders that are like, you know, the root folder slash 2018 slash 01.
Casey:
And then the file names would be roughly ISO 8601 because this is one of the rare cases where I think ISO 8601 makes perfect sense.
Casey:
So the file name would be something along the lines of...
Casey:
2018-01-31.
Casey:
And in my particular case, I did a space, which I know some people may not agree with, whatever, it doesn't matter, than the 24-hour time.
Casey:
So something like 21-53-whateverseconds.jpg, right?
Casey:
So all this script did...
Casey:
Was it would crack open all of these images.
Casey:
It would look at the EXIF data to see when was this picture taken.
Casey:
Then it would rename that file to be, you know, the roughly 8601 time and date.
Casey:
And then it would file that away and copy it to the appropriate folder.
Casey:
Does that make sense so far?
Casey:
Is everyone with me?
Casey:
Yep.
Casey:
So this was working pretty well.
Casey:
Except it required like a whole bunch of third-party libraries because Python.
Casey:
And I never had the confidence to like really tweak it because I sort of understand Python, but I can read it okay, but I'm really, really bad at writing it.
Casey:
So it felt like an untenable solution.
Casey:
Like I shouldn't have something that's this important to me that I can't really work with.
Casey:
Plus, HEVC and more importantly, HEIC happened.
Casey:
And I wasn't confident that this script would work with either of those.
Casey:
It may have for all I know, but I wasn't confident.
Casey:
And that was just a straw that broke the camel's back.
Casey:
And I said, you know what?
Casey:
Screw it.
Casey:
I'm going to rewrite this.
Casey:
I'm going to do it in Swift.
Casey:
And I'm going to make a command line app to do it.
Casey:
And so I wrote an app.
Casey:
And it's about 500 lines, and it's just used via the command line.
Casey:
And what you do is you say, here's the source folder where all of these files exist, be it movies or images, and here's the target folder.
Casey:
And then it will do basically the same thing as this Python script did, is it will open up these images or open up these movies, figure out when they were taken, when the snapshot happened or when the recording happened, rename them, and then file them appropriately.
Casey:
It will also be smart enough to, if you took, like, a burst and you actually kept the burst, it'll rename it to, like, you know, something, something, something A, something, something, something B, something, something, something C, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
Casey:
And so there wouldn't be any collisions.
Casey:
And it will report in when something, like, when I couldn't figure out when the picture was taken.
Casey:
Because sometimes, for example, with Instagram, when you save a picture...
Casey:
Or maybe it's Instagram stories.
Casey:
I forget what.
Casey:
But one way or another, sometimes there is no EXIF data.
Casey:
So there's no reliable way to figure out when was this picture taken.
Casey:
And I have the option of falling back to, like, the file creation date.
Casey:
But sometimes that works.
Casey:
Sometimes that doesn't.
Casey:
Blah, blah, blah.
Casey:
So I wrote all this in Swift.
Casey:
And it's roughly 500 lines.
Casey:
It does not use any sort of third-party library.
Casey:
There's no Carthage.
Casey:
There's no CocoaPods because I'm not an animal and also because I didn't need anything.
Casey:
And it felt...
Casey:
really, really good.
Casey:
Like, I'm really happy with it.
Casey:
It's not perfect, but, you know, this one is mine and it works for me.
Casey:
And I have learned some new things during it.
Casey:
For whatever reason, I never really had an occasion to use what old people will call NSOperationQ, what I would call just OperationQ.
Casey:
I'd never really had a need for that in the past, and I used one.
Casey:
And I actually found a bug because of it earlier today, but that's a different story.
Casey:
But nevertheless, this thing is multithreaded, so it will spread
Casey:
You know, spew a whole ton of threads and churn through all these files and rename them and move them or copy them and so on and so forth.
Casey:
And I really am happy with this.
Casey:
Now, do I plan to release it to anyone?
Casey:
Absolutely not, because I wrote it for me.
Casey:
It works only for me.
Casey:
This is specifically designed to work for me.
Casey:
And the code kind of looks like garbage because I'm not showing it to anyone.
Casey:
nor do I really plan on open sourcing it because I don't really know what good will come from that other than people laughing at why this is crummy code.
Casey:
Because again, I didn't make it super testable.
Casey:
I didn't make it super robust because it's just for me.
Casey:
It's okay.
Casey:
But I'm really pleased with how it worked out, a couple of small bugs aside, and I just thought it was a really neat learning experience.
Casey:
And maybe the only thing that's super interesting for the listeners is to say, sometimes scratching your own itch can really be helpful because now I can use Operation Queues with confidence in my work work.
Casey:
And I understand that Operation Q is in iOS.
Casey:
Like, I'm fully aware of that.
Casey:
But for whatever reason, I just never really had a need for it.
Casey:
And now, and I'm picking on this only because it's a silly example that many, many iOS developers have used in the past.
Casey:
Marco, I assume you've used Operation Qs at some point or another, especially for Overcast.
Marco:
I use many of them.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
So maybe it's kind of weird that I hadn't had a need for one, but for whatever reason I hadn't.
Casey:
And now I've used them.
Casey:
And so now I kind of know something and that's exciting.
Casey:
And so I just thought it was a useful thing to share that, you know, if you're a developer, even if you're not learning a new language to do these sorts of things, you know, if you're not trying to use this as an excuse to teach yourself Python, for example, sometimes it's just nice to do something different in the language you already know and love.
Casey:
So that's basically it.
Casey:
That's all I got.
Marco:
That's cool.
Marco:
Yeah, like, I think this is kind of one of the unspoken benefits of being a programmer and also just a computer user.
Marco:
It's like, if you as a computer user have a problem that you would like to be solved in a better or different way, you know, if it's something that can be reasonably easily programmed and you're a programmer, you can just do it.
Marco:
You can just make something that does this for you.
Marco:
It's very empowering.
Marco:
It's really amazing.
Marco:
And it's one of the amazing things about modern computers, like, about all computers, really, that, like, you know, that give people the power to do that if they...
Marco:
learn the relatively accessible skill of programming, then you can do lots of cool things like this.
Marco:
Whether it's as simple as an Excel macro, all the way down to doing something cool like this with Swift and Operation Queues on the command line.
Marco:
It's one of the great satisfactions and advantages of being a programmer.
Marco:
If you have a problem, there's a decent chance you can make a solution to it.
Marco:
If one doesn't exist out there, that's exactly what you want.
Casey:
Yep, exactly right.
Casey:
And I think your point that you just made is very important that this doesn't have to be writing a Swift command line app.
Casey:
This can be, just like you said, something in Excel.
Casey:
It can be something with Automator.
Casey:
If you're one of those iOS weirdos like Federico and Mike, then you can do this using workflow.
Casey:
I mean, there's all sorts of different things you can do.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
in all different levels of the stack or levels of abstraction.
Casey:
And it's just really, really nice and convenient.
Casey:
And yeah, there's a couple of minor bugs I need to work out.
Casey:
It occurred to me earlier tonight that the problem with going multi-threaded is that as multiple threads are trying to figure out if there's name collisions,
Casey:
sometimes one thread will think there's not a name collision.
Casey:
And by the time it gets to copying the file, there will be a name collision, which is unwise.
Casey:
So I need to clean that up a little bit and make sure I have some gates in there where those sorts of things are being figured out.
Casey:
But nonetheless, the point I'm driving at is whatever the level may be, be it in assembly or be it in an Excel macro or anything in between,
Casey:
It's just really, really neat to be able to solve these sorts of problems for yourself.
Casey:
And once I get this thing really and truly locked in, which I think I'm pretty darn close, this is going to be perfect for me forever.
Casey:
Because it was written for me.
Casey:
I guess my first contracting assignment for my newfound future, which may or may not ever happen, of being an iOS or Mac contractor...
Casey:
I hired myself.
Casey:
And so I wrote this for myself.
Casey:
And you know what?
Casey:
I did a pretty great job.
Casey:
It's perfect.
Casey:
Short of that one bug.
Casey:
So, you know, it's this sort of thing.
Casey:
And again, I can't stress enough, like whatever your abilities may be, there's something like this that you can do.
Casey:
It may even be in workflow.
Casey:
It may be whatever, but there's something like this you can do.
Casey:
And it feels so great once it's done.
Marco:
forecast is another great example actually that was written entirely for you wasn't it like you never and sidetrack still is like sidetrack is the is the drift sync utility like that's still written just for me in the language i already knew but doing something that was totally new to me like you know similar what you were just saying like it was wonderful and solved a really big problem i had editing podcasts and lining up people's tracks like
Marco:
But you're probably going to get at least two or three people asking you to open source this.
Marco:
I've had handfuls of people ask me over the years that Sidetrack is now I think like four years old.
Marco:
I've given it to a few friends here and there, but it's not releasable.
Marco:
There's a lot.
Marco:
It works.
Marco:
This is one of the advantages of making things for yourself.
Marco:
It works for me most of the time.
Casey:
Right, exactly.
Marco:
But like, you know, give it something it doesn't expect or some kind of condition that I didn't consider or that I never run into myself.
Marco:
So it's not really tested.
Marco:
And, you know, it might not work so well or it might not work at all or it might do weird things.
Marco:
And so, you know, like making something releasable and then releasing it is way different and way more work than making something that works for you.
Marco:
And it's occasionally worth doing.
Marco:
You know, some things are worth releasing to the world for like the benefit of the world or maybe for some kind of business reason.
Marco:
But there's nothing wrong with making things that are just for you that you never share with anybody or that you share with only a couple of friends.
Marco:
It doesn't have to be a releasable big thing.
Marco:
I usually use shell scripts for these kinds of tasks.
Marco:
I just like using shell scripts a lot.
Marco:
But I have a giant shell script that takes the input files from each of the podcasts I do.
Marco:
So it takes my file, the file you give me, the file that John gives me for this show,
Marco:
And I don't even have to move them out of Dropbox anymore.
Marco:
It goes and looks in Dropbox for the files where they're supposed to be.
Marco:
Moves them into my project directory.
Marco:
Decodes them.
Marco:
Moves all the channels around.
Marco:
Decodes the weird call recorder files.
Marco:
It does all this stuff mostly by calling out to FFmpeg and stuff like that.
Marco:
Lines them all up and outputs all the right files.
Marco:
And it's just a big shell script, and I made it just for me, just to help me with this task I do every week.
Marco:
That's kind of tedious if I do it manually.
Marco:
And it's great.
Marco:
And the ability of programmers to do this, it's so wonderful and productive.
Marco:
To be a power user of a computer...
Marco:
Then to also be able to do at least a little bit of programming, you can just make the computer work so much better for you and take even more advantage of the massive amount of computational power that is at our fingertips just waiting for the right software to come along and actually use it.
Casey:
One other final thought on this, which I forgot to mention earlier.
Casey:
I do have a problem with this thing that I've written.
Casey:
And the problem that I have is that now I kind of want to make a full-on Mac app, like not a command line app, like a full-on GUI Mac app, where it'll basically... That's my problem with the thing you wrote, the fact that you called it a Mac app, and I was all excited.
John:
Wow, Casey wrote a Mac app.
John:
No, he just wrote a shell script in Swift.
LAUGHTER
Casey:
As much as I really want to get angry and argue with you, I think that is actually a fair characterization.
Casey:
But now I kind of do want a GUI app.
John:
Marco, you should make Overcast for the Mac, but just make it a command line script.
John:
It's a command line thing that just hits the web interface endpoints and pulls down the audio that way.
Marco:
It would just be a shell script.
Marco:
Just pipe it to AFPlay or whatever.
John:
It's just a really long alias for a curl command.
Exactly.
Casey:
But no, now I do kind of want a GUI app.
Casey:
So rather than just going on faith that this will work, which again, short of this one bug, has worked pretty well the few times I've used it so far.
Casey:
But I'd actually, I'm thinking about maybe quote unquote upgrading this to be a full-on GUI app such that this way I can kind of stage, okay, here's what we think this file should be named and here's where it will belong.
Casey:
It kind of like image capture, like I have this vision of something that aesthetically looks vaguely like image capture, where it's basically like a big table of here's a little preview of the image.
Casey:
Here's maybe a couple of pieces of data about it.
Casey:
And then here's where we think it should end up.
Casey:
do you want to commit all these changes or like tweak a couple things?
Casey:
And then there'll be basically the big green go button that'll actually do it.
Casey:
Whereas right now it just goes immediately and it's copying.
Casey:
It's not moving.
Casey:
So in theory it's non-destructive, but it would be nice to be able to say, Ooh, actually that definitely is not right.
Casey:
Let's tweak that.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Casey:
And so who knows, maybe in my copious spare time, I'll be able to write my first Mac GUI app.
Casey:
We'll see.
Casey:
But, um,
Marco:
I'll tell you one thing.
Marco:
That is 10,000 times more work than making the ShellScript version.
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
It's so much.
Marco:
I've had similar thoughts about, oh, I should really polish up sidetrack and make a little GUI for it so people can drag in their files and pick which channel should go where and output the undrifted files or whatever.
Marco:
And even that, especially now that I know from Forecast, it's so much work.
Marco:
GUIs are so much harder to make.
Marco:
It's one thing if you just want a GUI.
Marco:
But if you want a good one, that's very different.
Marco:
If you want a nice Mac app, or even a passably decent Mac app, Forecast is not a nice Mac app.
Marco:
It's at best an okay, passable Mac app.
Marco:
But that's fine.
Marco:
It's not worth investing...
Marco:
tons and tons of my time into it to make it a great Mac app.
Marco:
What you're talking about, that's a pretty dramatic increase in the workload for this problem.
Casey:
Oh, 100%.
Marco:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Marco:
Especially if you don't really need the GUI.
Marco:
Sidetrack, I don't need the GUI for Sidetrack.
Marco:
I call it, in my giant shell scripts that process my podcasts,
Marco:
And, you know, like Jason Snell uses it, and I believe he made an automator workflow to use it, so he can use it kind of in a graphical way at least.
Marco:
But, you know, like I just use it through the shell script, so I don't need it.
Marco:
So, like, it's one of those things, like, I would love to do it someday, but I'm probably never going to because it's probably not worth it.
Marco:
You know, this is the kind of thing, like, if you don't need this GUI, you're talking about, like, now taking this nice small...
Marco:
but you know script basically that works great for you now you're talking about making into a product basically like you're talking about the amount of work necessary to make it into a product for lots of people and then you have to deal with you know do you want to release that because once you put in all that much work you probably might as well release it then it's a big thing and you got to support it or even if it's not even if it's free or even if it's open source you still got to deal with people's you know emails and questions and pull requests if it's open source and everything like you you
Marco:
It basically dramatically broadens the scope of this project from a shell script that works for you to this product, basically.
Casey:
Yeah, and I agree with you.
Casey:
I think the thing is, though, that even if I GUI-ified it, if you will, it would be the world's most ugly user interface because it would be intended just for me.
Casey:
And at most...
Casey:
I suspect I would open source it.
Casey:
I'm not saying I'm going to, but I'm saying with this hypothetical GUI on top of it, maybe I would open source it, but I don't think I would ever properly release it.
Casey:
But to that end, you're still right.
Casey:
I would then feel guilty about ignoring all the pull requests that I would end up ignoring, and I would feel guilty about ignoring all the issues I'd be ignoring.
Casey:
No matter how much I said, this is really made just for me, and it's not intended for anyone else to use it, inevitably somebody else would be like, oh, I should use this, but now I want something new.
Marco:
Or it didn't work on this one file or whatever else.
Casey:
Right, exactly, exactly.
Casey:
So this is why – and I don't mean this in like a – I don't mean to be antagonistic about it.
Casey:
It's just these are all the reasons why I don't plan to release it because no matter how much I caveat, no matter how much I say, look, this was written just for me, this code, I know it's garbage, but it was quick and dirty just to get it to work.
Casey:
Like no matter how much you say that,
Casey:
Nobody ever really and truly understands it.
Casey:
And so it's just a waste of time to release this in any capacity, even with a GUI.
Casey:
But on the plus side, though, that means it could be the world's ugliest, world's worst GUI, and it would be okay because it would be literally just for me.
John:
I feel like GitHub has changed us a little bit and introduced the very important modern developer skill, which is the ability to put source code up on, on GitHub and you're under your GitHub account and then feel zero guilt for ignoring it forever because all you're doing, all the only reason you're putting it there is to have a convenient storage space.
John:
So when you need to get that shell script on some new Mac that you're setting up or like basically using GitHub as hosting and as the version control for yourself and hosting for yourself, um,
John:
And with no intention of ever looking at the issues or ever answering anyone's questions about anything or caring how many people fork it or like – because I see a lot of that.
John:
People have personal products on GitHub that it's so clear that they're just using it as like their Git remote and convenient hosting.
John:
That's it.
John:
And maybe you said you'd feel guilty about it or whatever, but like I think that –
John:
Getting over that and eventually getting the discipline to reframe the problem in that way can be slightly freeing.
John:
Because I think there is a benefit to having that source code like someplace else and to have it hosted.
John:
Even just as a single user.
John:
I mean, I know you can just make it private.
John:
Like, oh, why even make it private?
John:
We could have it make it private.
John:
But...
John:
i this i know this goes against what i just said but every once in a while someone will do a convenient pull request or find a bug and you can just click a button and accept their thing and your program got better and you didn't have to do anything it may be super rare that that happens maybe it's once every three years but you know i don't know i i just feel like that's a that's a good thing to be able to do
John:
Uh, cause I feel bad about all of like, cause we all have like piles of crap code, like on our local computers for various purposes.
John:
Uh, and I feel bad about all that.
John:
I somehow, I think I would feel better if that crap code was like up on a public GitHub page for some poor person to stumble across and do with what they want.
Marco:
We are sponsored today by Squarespace.
Marco:
Squarespace is the way to go because not only can they cover all sorts of types of sites.
Marco:
You can cover simple one-page sites all the way up to full business sites, portfolios, storefronts, podcasts.
Marco:
You can host so many types of things in Squarespace because there's so much functionality all built in.
Marco:
All that you can get to is just a few clicks.
Marco:
It's so easy to use.
Marco:
It's by far the easiest website building and hosting platform I've ever seen.
Marco:
Squarespace sites look professionally designed regardless of your skill level.
Marco:
There's no coding required.
Marco:
Everything is intuitive and easy to use.
Marco:
And it's just incredible what you don't have to worry about compared to everything else.
Marco:
You don't have to worry about hosting, upgrades, installing software, downtime, security fixes, all that stuff.
Marco:
Because Squarespace takes care of all of that for you.
Marco:
They are scaled up so they can handle any amount of traffic that people will send to them.
Marco:
And if you're making the site for somebody else and they need support, or let's be honest, if you need support,
Marco:
Squarespace is there to support it, so you don't have to.
Marco:
It's wonderful.
Marco:
Check it out today.
Marco:
Next time you have a project to do that requires a website, which is pretty frequent for a lot of us, check out Squarespace first.
Marco:
Give it an hour.
Marco:
See how far you get.
Marco:
I bet you'll be so impressed that you won't want to go anywhere else, because why would you?
Marco:
It's done.
Marco:
Give it an hour on Squarespace, and it's probably done.
Marco:
It's pretty great.
Marco:
Check it out today at squarespace.com.
Marco:
You can start a free trial.
Marco:
When you sign up, make sure to use offer code ATP to get 10% off your first purchase.
Marco:
Make your next move with a beautiful website from Squarespace.
Marco:
It's time to return to Marco's Vinyl Corner.
Marco:
Oh no, I forgot my own joke.
Marco:
Marco's Vinyl Arc.
Marco:
Oh my goodness.
Marco:
So, in the last episode of Marco's Vinyl Arc, where I was discussing getting this turntable and enjoying it and... You just need one more turntable and you will have finally arrived.
John:
Oh, because I have a microphone?
John:
Mm-hmm.
Casey:
Yeah, all right.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
I did not get that at all.
Casey:
Well done.
John:
He maybe oversubscribed in the microphone department.
Marco:
Yeah, exactly.
Marco:
Anyway, part of the appeal, what I like about it is that it is kind of the anti-technology.
Marco:
You manually take your hands and you put a piece of physical media...
Marco:
on a player that plays it in almost the most basic analog way possible.
Marco:
Like, it's ridiculous how basic this technology really is at heart and how little it's really doing.
Marco:
And so, and I really enjoyed...
Marco:
You know, not only like the anti-tech part of it of just like being so simple and not relying on things like crappy, spotty voice assistants, not relying on Wi-Fi or people's weird, you know, network stuff or, you know, services or gated communities or whatever else.
Marco:
Just a single purpose device.
Marco:
You put music onto it and it plays and.
Marco:
And then you get to listen to the music and you don't get to you don't get to like mess with the music.
Marco:
You don't get to like skip around super easy or change, you know, speak at a, you know, yell a different band name across the room to listen to a different band before the song's even finished yet.
Marco:
Like we so often do with the echo.
Marco:
Like you have to like sit and enjoy it slowly.
Marco:
And that is there's a lot of advantages to that.
John:
Builds character, you might say.
Marco:
Okay.
Marco:
But, you know, as John rightfully pointed out, you know, you don't need a vinyl player to do that.
Marco:
You know, you can use, like, a CD player or an iPod or a cassette deck or an 8-track if those still exist.
Marco:
Like, you can use lots of things that can only play music, you know, in the more modern way.
Marco:
I didn't want to just buy an iPod because, A, that introduces too much choice again.
Marco:
Because then it's like, okay, now...
Marco:
Part of what I like about the vinyl situation is that it forces me to really narrow down what albums I actually want to buy.
Marco:
What albums are good enough that I actually want this giant square sitting in a bookshelf indefinitely?
Marco:
So that's one angle.
Marco:
And also...
Marco:
When I want to play some music, it's nice to have restricted choice.
Marco:
When you have a cylinder you can speak into and you can just name anything in all of music and it will start playing, that's nice in certain contexts.
Marco:
It's nice to be able to just call up any song if you want to hear it.
Marco:
But if you just want to put something on in the background or put something on to listen to, to chill out on the couch for a while or something, I find that I'm almost paralyzed by the choice of that.
Marco:
And I often will just call up the same things over and over again because I just can't think of anything else off the top of my head.
Marco:
I don't have that kind of whatever kind of creativity of the mind lets people call things up or create new ideas out of nothing.
Marco:
I've never really had that.
Marco:
I need a prompt.
Marco:
I joked on the show a long time ago that I'm not a salad power user.
Marco:
When you go to one of those trendy salad places, I want a list of presets and I get to choose from the presets and maybe do some customization from the salad.
Marco:
But really, I just want presets to choose from.
Marco:
And so one thing I like also about the vinyl situation is that when I want to go play something, I can look through the, like, you know, roughly, I think I have about 20 albums now.
Marco:
I can look through, like, the 20 albums and just say, which of these I want to listen to right now?
Marco:
By nature, it's all stuff I like.
Marco:
Because we bought them.
Marco:
So it's not like I don't have to look through every artist ever in the history of the world.
Marco:
I'm already looking at stuff I like.
Marco:
And I'd be fine putting on pretty much any of them.
Marco:
And I'll see one and I'm like, oh yeah, let's put on that one.
Marco:
But I wouldn't have thought to call it up if I was just given a prompt by voice.
Marco:
Like, oh, what do you want to listen to?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
So that part's nice as well.
John:
This system is going to fall apart when you've purchased your first 7,000 albums and have a section of your house dedicated to stacks and stacks of them.
John:
And now you've just recreated your iPod in physical form.
Marco:
Right.
John:
Okay.
John:
So anyway.
John:
Well, that's the thing.
John:
Remember record collections when I was a kid?
John:
And maybe you remember it well.
John:
People would fill their houses with these things.
John:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
My dad has one.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
In fact, we actually – we didn't – in my house growing up, we had – our upstairs was – it was just like the three bedrooms and the bathroom arranged like basically in a giant square with like a little tiny like hexagonal hallway in the middle.
Marco:
It wasn't even like a long hallway.
Marco:
It was like a little like hexagonal landing basically with like a door to each of the rooms and that's it.
Marco:
And there was nowhere in the house where my mom could store her massive record collection.
Marco:
So in that tiny little hallway were just like four like milk crate type baskets just filled with records.
Marco:
And so basically my entire childhood growing up, I would all the time stub my toe on these giant boxes of vinyl that were sitting in the hallway to our house that I walked through constantly.
Marco:
You just like squeeze between two of them to walk into the door of my bedroom.
Like...
Marco:
anyway yeah big pain in the butt anyway i'm really enjoying the vinyl however there are a couple of limitations obviously one of them as john mentioned before is that you get like five minutes of play time before you flip it over especially on these new audiophile masters where they take a right they take like one album that's on if it's on cd it's on one cd but if it's on vinyl they split it onto four sides like two two discs four sides each one with like three songs at best so
Marco:
that's kind of a pain and and that isn't even for length reasons like there's these giant black gaps in the middle anyway so that's that's a minor pain um but one of the more you know glaring limitations of this is that this only works for albums that are available on vinyl and not everything and not even just fish not everything is available on vinyl that i want to listen to in this fashion um
Marco:
I would like something that I can just take some kind of physical media that can be in some kind of small collection like what I have with the records and put it into a player and have it just start playing.
Marco:
And to remove all of the abilities I have
Marco:
with a voice assistant to just yell across the room to have a change, to make it not that easy to even skip a song.
Marco:
Because I actually kind of like being forced to listen to all the songs.
Marco:
Because as I mentioned last time, I've always been a full album listener.
Marco:
I don't use shuffle or anything.
Marco:
I always listen to full albums.
Marco:
Obviously, one thing I could do is just get a CD player.
Marco:
and just get CDs.
Marco:
Because CDs cost nothing.
Marco:
If you go on Amazon and look to buy used CDs, any album you want, you can buy on a used CD for like 50 cents plus $4 shipping.
Marco:
So they basically cost nothing.
Marco:
And
Marco:
But I also thought like, you know, I also would kind of want the ability to make my own.
Marco:
Like maybe certain albums that aren't even available on CD or like certain like Phish shows I want to like have a whole show or, you know, or like a band like the Beatles where I like a lot of Beatles songs, but I don't like any of their albums well enough to play them straight through.
Marco:
Or things like the two Gleam albums by the Avett Brothers.
Marco:
they're both EPs.
Marco:
I would like to have that be one long CD.
Marco:
That's the regular length of an album because they're really good, but you know, it's two very short EPs.
Marco:
Uh, so anyway, so I wanted some degree of customizability, physical media and a way to play it where I could literally just put it in, not navigate any menus of anything, not even have like the TV on in living room, just put it in and it can start playing and I can walk away.
Um,
Marco:
So again, CDs, I think, are the most obvious solution to this.
Marco:
These days, any CD player that you can find that's at all reasonable will also be able to play MP3 CDs.
Marco:
And so that blows through any kind of length limit you might be worried about with single discs.
Marco:
The downside of CDs is that then I would have to have a CD burner on my computer all the time.
Marco:
I'd have to get out a CD burner out of my closet and plug it in and deal with that whenever I wanted to create a new one of these.
Marco:
So I wanted to see if I could do better.
Marco:
In the last segment that we talked about this a few weeks ago, I jokingly said, why don't I just get something that can play songs off of an SD card?
Marco:
Wouldn't it be cool to have like a little box full of SD cards?
Marco:
And you can make them like tiny little record albums.
Marco:
And so basically, I decided, let me try to actually make something that does this.
Marco:
There's this entire world out there that I have not yet taken part in of really small, really inexpensive hobbyist computer gear led by things like the Arduino and Raspberry Pi projects.
Marco:
And the more basic stuff, like the Arduino-based stuff, I haven't used any of it before.
Marco:
But once you get into things like wiring things on breadboards, this is beyond my level of expertise and my level of interest, honestly.
Marco:
I don't really want to get into the hardware stuff
Marco:
manipulation side of things for the most part.
Marco:
Anything that involves putting resistors on, soldering anything, or using those little waffle board, breadboard things, that's not for me right now.
Marco:
Raspberry Pi, on the other hand, has a bunch of really interesting stuff that...
Marco:
Until I started looking at this, I really didn't realize quite how much stuff there was, quite how easy it was to use, and quite how little it all cost.
Marco:
Again, I've mentioned before, in the Apple ecosystem, if we spend too much time in Apple world, it's easy to miss or to not be aware of...
Marco:
quite how cheap everything else is everywhere else like what you can get for like under $50 for almost any type of category that's not by Apple like it's it's pretty remarkable so I decided I'm gonna get a Raspberry Pi and I'm gonna try to build an SD card audio player
Marco:
I ordered the Raspberry Pi.
Marco:
I got like the, I mean, and there's, again, there's tons of different ones.
Marco:
The smallest one is like $10.
Marco:
Like it's, it's, it's ridiculous what you can get.
Marco:
I got like the, the kind of regular one, which the board is about, I think $35.
Marco:
And I got a little plastic case for it for like another 10 and a little USB power supply for another, you know, five or 10 or whatever.
Marco:
And it's just a Linux computer.
Marco:
Like, it's a little tiny Linux computer with a remarkable amount of hardware and power.
Marco:
Like, it has four USB ports, HDMI out, audio out, and composite video if you need that for some reason, and Wi-Fi and Ethernet.
Yeah.
Marco:
All of that, and one gig of RAM and a pretty decent ARM processor, all with an SD card that came with it in this bundle package, with a micro SD card that has a preloaded installation of Raspbian.
Marco:
It's like the Debian variant, I think, for Raspberry Pi.
Marco:
You plug it in, and I plugged into this little tiny HDMI monitor I got for my failed video career, and you plug in any keyboard, mouse, and HDMI monitor, and it comes pre-configured.
Marco:
The SD card, you launch it the first time, and it shows you a GUI.
Marco:
You can navigate with the mouse you plug into it, and it's like, all right, pick your distribution, and we'll install it for you.
Marco:
And you pick whatever it is, you plug it into the network, and it downloads the distribution with your settings, you give it your Wi-Fi password during setup, and then it overwrites itself with the distribution that you just picked, with the Wi-Fi pre-configured.
Marco:
It's shocking how good this is, and how really relatively easy it is to use.
Marco:
And then...
Marco:
I had a Linux computer that was ready to go with built-in audio, built-in networking, built-in USB for me to do whatever I wanted with.
Marco:
So I poked around.
Marco:
One of the things with audio playback that is important to me is gapless playback.
Marco:
So I can't just do a shell script that just calls a terminal thing that just plays audio synchronously and then stops and then goes to the next track.
Marco:
I want a gapless playback between tracks because a lot of the albums that I listen to are live albums or they have transitions between songs.
Marco:
And so a gap between everything is, you know, just kind of, it's jarring and it's kind of, you know, inelegant.
Marco:
And so I want a gapless.
Marco:
And it turns out there's this great music player that's been around forever that of course I never knew about because I've been in Apple land called MPD, Music Player Demon.
Marco:
And
Marco:
It does gapless with no effort.
Marco:
This software is really advanced.
Marco:
I had no idea.
Marco:
The Raspberry Pi has a microSD slot, but that's for its disk.
Marco:
You can't really use it for anything else.
Marco:
It has to boot off of that.
Marco:
So I had to add my own card reader, but I had like a drawer full of card readers.
Marco:
And I made a shell script that would respond to the card being inserted via Udev.
Marco:
It copies any audio files off of that card into a temp directory.
Marco:
And as it's copying, it starts playing the first one.
Marco:
So it's fast response time.
Marco:
And then it unmounts the card.
Marco:
And if you remove the card, it stops.
Marco:
I gotta say, it took not that much effort, and it pretty much works.
Marco:
And there's a couple of things I did with it that I do want to touch on, but it's kind of awesome.
Marco:
I wish I had... Now I'm just brainstorming.
Marco:
I wish I had more things that I needed Raspberry Pis for because I can't believe how good and how easy it is to use this stuff and how cheap it all was.
Marco:
It kind of ignited in me this...
Marco:
This this satisfaction and happiness that like, oh, my God, I just made this awesome little computer do this crazy cool thing that I that I wanted.
Marco:
You know, it's similar to, you know, we mentioned earlier, like the satisfaction of being a programmer, being able to have a computer solve a problem for you by writing a script or something to do it.
Marco:
This this was like the hardware version of that.
Marco:
Like I wanted a little SD card player to play audio and in a very simple way.
Marco:
And I just made one.
Marco:
And it wasn't that hard because I already know how to use Linux.
Marco:
And it was really so satisfying and such a fun little project.
Marco:
We don't get a lot of fun in the Apple world.
Marco:
We get some cool stuff, but they're not so big on fun.
Marco:
This was just a fun little thing, and it was really nice to do.
Marco:
Very satisfying.
Marco:
And I'm just so thankful to the world of Linux and open source software and these amazing hobbyist things like Raspberry Pi.
Marco:
I even later spent another $30 to upgrade the audio interface in it with this company called HiFiBerry that just makes a variety of
Marco:
Audio I.O.
Marco:
boards that just stick right on top of the Raspberry Pi using the big I.O.
Marco:
header that's on it.
Marco:
And they sell their own little cases that are a little bit taller that fit it.
Marco:
It's amazing.
Marco:
And so I made this awesome player.
Marco:
Now there are certain things that didn't go so well.
Marco:
The...
Marco:
The idea of automatically detecting an SD card being inserted or removed does indeed work from UDev, but doesn't work all the time.
Marco:
Occasionally, it gets into a state where it stops sending add and remove events.
Marco:
It only sends change events.
Marco:
So I have a little bit of a tweak that I need to do there.
Marco:
That also seems to vary with which card reader I'm using.
Marco:
One of them seems to work more reliably than the others in this regard, so I'm just sticking with that one.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
Also, I guess that's probably the only major problem.
Marco:
Oh, the other problem is I assumed that it would be really easy to go on eBay and buy large lots of used, low-capacity SD cards for very little money.
Marco:
Because to copy over an album, even if you encode it with ALAC or some kind of large codec, that's still only going to be 300 megs maybe.
Marco:
And so if you have like a card that's a gig or 512 megs, that's enough for this purpose.
Marco:
Like you don't need larger cards than that.
Marco:
So I assumed it'd be really easy to just go online and get like, you know, lots of used one gig SD cards for like a dollar each or something or less.
Marco:
It turns out it's not so easy.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
I don't know where these all are, but they're not being sold very, very often.
Marco:
So the best I could do is there's a couple of vendors that sell 10 packs of 16 gig cheap cards for about $5 each.
Casey:
That's insane.
Casey:
Oh my gosh, that's cheap.
Casey:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
I understand it's more than you need.
Casey:
Like I totally get what you're driving at, but man, that's cheap.
John:
16 gigs and you're going to put an album's worth of mp3s on them you need smaller cards i can't find smaller cards or at least or like the smaller ones are also five dollars each so it's like well i might as well get the 16 gig for the same price i i so i continue to think that uh you need to take this one step farther and put all of your music on the internal very large sd card that's part of the raspberry pi and
John:
and have the thing that you insert basically be an amiibo, like a QR code or an NFC thing.
John:
It's just a series of these little chips.
John:
They don't even have to have electronics in them.
John:
They just need to have some sort of little code that says, please play this track that you already have on your internal SD card.
John:
That's what you need.
Marco:
Well, I'd brainstorm other options.
Marco:
So, you know, one option would be, like, I think one of the coolest options would be you get one of the little camera modules for it and you just show it, like, a little card.
Marco:
No, show it your album.
Marco:
Hold up the vinyl album to it.
Marco:
But, you know, a lot of these things are things that aren't available on vinyl.
Marco:
So I'm thinking, like, you know, you basically get, like, a little, like, have, like, a little, like, card file of, like, index cards that are just, like, printed album art and just hold it up and have it recognize it.
John:
Oh, wait, I've got an idea.
John:
How about you just hook up a microphone and then you could say what song you wanted to play and it would play it.
John:
wow oh did i ruin it yep a little bit i mean i i'm glad you're having a good time with this hobby thing but like i just keep thinking of these little cards i mean and the other angle of little cards i feel like you should uh maybe get some of that spray that nintendo uses for the switch cartridges to make sure like no small children in your house eat your music
John:
I just think of what else you could do with that spray.
Marco:
I mean, I know hops isn't a chewer, but you know, no, he's not also.
Marco:
And so, and I also considered other, so one thing I considered when I was battling you dev for reliability and I was thinking like, okay, maybe, you know, if the problem is that the SD card readers aren't reliably telling you dev sometimes when things are added and removed, maybe the solution is to either use compact flashcards or,
Marco:
I didn't go down that path, at least not yet, because eventually you'd have calmed down.
Marco:
But I also thought, what about cheap little USB sticks, like thumb drives?
Marco:
Because those are their own complete USB devices, so they should be more reliable at telling the system...
Marco:
you have to try to put them in three times every time you want to listen to music exactly yeah that's that's one problem and also they're just kind of ugly and clunky but i did look and and they have about the same pricing you can you can get like the those kind that you get at every conference ever they have like the big flip around metal cover like the like swivels around the plastic insert like everyone's seen these and you can get them printed with your logo and everything those cost about the same like a few dollars each is roughly what you're what those cost so like
Marco:
These are fine solutions, and it depends on how many of these cards or things I intend to have.
Marco:
But they're fun.
Marco:
I'm probably not going to do a whole lot.
Marco:
The other downside I found with the SD cards is I had this great image in my mind of having these wonderful little labels that I could print the album art onto a label that fits the SD card and be able to flip through my little box of SD cards and be able to look at tiny little versions of what the record would look like if it was tiny and rectangular.
Marco:
And I even got the right size labels.
Marco:
They're .75 by 1 inch.
Marco:
They come in sheets by Avery, and they're printable.
Marco:
But the print quality on them is so bad.
Marco:
I have an inkjet and a laser, and I tried them both, and they both look horrendous when printing on these.
Marco:
And they're really hard to align.
Marco:
And also, when you put a label on an SD card and then put it into an SD card reader, it doesn't fit as well.
Yeah.
John:
So... In keeping with the rest of this project, I feel like you should hire some sort of artisan who lives in Portland to use a single hairbrush to hand paint each one of your things onto the SD card.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
You ever see people who do these sculptures with graphite from a pencil?
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Absolutely, yeah.
John:
Get one of those people to do it.
John:
They'll do it for you.
Marco:
Anyway, this has been a fun project.
Marco:
Ultimately, I think...
Marco:
The better solution to all of this is probably just a CD burner, honestly.
Marco:
So I'm really glad I did it.
Marco:
And it'll work sometimes.
Marco:
But I think a CD burner is actually...
Marco:
the better solution to this problem because I can put it right into my Blu-ray player and it just starts playing and I don't need to turn the TV on.
Marco:
That problem gets solved that way, but the downside is I have to have a CD burner somewhere on my desk.
Casey:
See, but this is the same thing that I just went through in a much different scale.
Casey:
The easiest answer for me to return that stupid dongle would be to throw it away.
Casey:
The second
Casey:
Second easiest answer would have been to give it to UPS.
Casey:
But I wanted to try something different.
Casey:
And I'm actually really jealous of this, even though I think this is a truly preposterous reason to get into the Raspberry Pi.
Casey:
I have been searching for a reason to teach myself what the hell the Raspberry Pi and Arduino are all about.
Casey:
And I've yet to come up with a good reason to do it.
Casey:
And so in that sense...
Casey:
I'm super jealous of what you've done because you now know a whole bunch about this world that I know absolutely nothing about and I want to know about.
Casey:
And so I applaud this.
Marco:
Well, I mean, I'll tell you what, though.
Marco:
I think you're overestimating what you need to know.
Marco:
Like, I was shocked how little I needed to do.
Marco:
Like, this entire project, I've been keeping it basically in one shell script on my desktop, like one text file that right now, let me see, it's 90 lines to set up this entire thing.
Yeah.
Marco:
It's very basic because all I'm doing is responding to a system daemon with a shell script when things are inserted and removed and sending really simple commands to... Oh, I've got to get into the control aspect of it as well.
Marco:
Regularly, insert the card, it plays.
Marco:
Take out the card, it stops.
Marco:
That's done.
Marco:
It requires no external control or anything.
Marco:
But I did think it would be nice to at least have a play-pause button.
Marco:
And there's a number of different ways to do this.
Marco:
You can get, for instance, you can get buttons, like actual physical buttons that have little wires on them that have little connectors on them that plug right into that big IO header on the Raspberry Pi, the GPIO header.
Marco:
And you can run a little Python service that responds to button presses on those buttons.
Marco:
really simply like that's and that's and i actually got a little pair of buttons i ended up not using them for you know i'll get into it in a minute but um but that's the thing you can do and again and a pair of buttons is like six bucks like again i just it's so wonderful how how inexpensive and affordable all the stuff is you know i've heard a lot of people um
Marco:
I'm talking about how they're used in schools where you can – like at these prices, if you can get a little computer board for $35 or less, you can get like one of the $10 ones.
Marco:
You can outfit a whole classroom with these things and have students doing projects with these things.
Marco:
That's incredible.
Marco:
And to have just the amount of computing power and flexibility and hardware that you can get.
Marco:
It's a whole computer.
Marco:
A Raspberry Pi could be a Linux computer.
Marco:
It could be a desktop.
Marco:
You can plug a monitoring keyboard and mouse into it and use it as a desktop.
Marco:
It wouldn't be the fastest desktop in the world, but you could still do it, and some people do it.
Marco:
It's just incredible what you can do with these things.
Marco:
I saw Steve Trout and Smith
Marco:
He recently made himself a HomeKit camera by using a Raspberry Pi, one of the tiny ones, with the camera module that's available for them in a little tiny case.
Marco:
And it's like a security camera for his house that's HomeKit compatible through God knows what.
Marco:
And he made it out of Raspberry Pi for probably under $50.
Marco:
That's just incredible.
Marco:
To have this kind of...
Marco:
power available to people it's it really is you know game changing and i know this is not a sudden thing i know this didn't just begin yesterday i'm just you know i'm just discovering it i'm late to it um and it just blows my mind like what's available here and it's it's so inspiring um to to make me want to do more projects with it and and for me and this this kind of played into earlier what i was saying about like i wish the home pod had a line in like
Marco:
As I'm dipping my toe in this world just for five seconds, it's really obvious to me, I really do like things being open.
Marco:
I see the value in openness and free software and just this whole world, open hardware, open software.
Marco:
The power that the technology we have today can offer to us if some of these walls are knocked down or not there in the first place.
Marco:
Anyway, one more quick thing.
Marco:
I did decide, let me play with remote control options.
Marco:
I actually had, do you guys know Samuel Clay and the News Blur product that he makes?
Marco:
He did a Kickstarter about, I don't know, maybe a year ago for a little wooden Internet of Things type remote called Turn Touch.
Marco:
And I backed it, and I got two of them.
Marco:
And it's this little, like, beautiful little square wooden remote with four buttons on it.
Marco:
It interfaces with either, I think, an iOS device, or in my case, I'm using my Mac Mini server to be, like, the host receiver for it.
Marco:
And you can map these buttons to do whatever you want.
Marco:
I made a little interface, again, using Bash shell scripting.
Marco:
I made a little interface on the SD card player that just uses Netcat.
Marco:
as like a simple command interface to listen for the commands, just listen for the strings, play, pause, next, and previous.
Marco:
And on the Mac that's hosting the Turntouch app, I mapped it to send using Netcat shell scripts.
Marco:
Each of the buttons just sends, you know, play, pause, previous, next, you know, stop.
Marco:
it was again like a half hour maybe to get the setup i never even had used netcat before but i didn't even know it existed uh but it did and it was super easy it took like two seconds to make a bash script that was a network service with like a command and response and like just incredible like what you can do with this stuff um if if you if you have like the the linux shops or the shell stripping shops i guess
Marco:
And so now I have this little remote that sends basic commands through, you know, through NPC to MPD and is play, pause and next track, previous track.
Marco:
It's just amazing.
Marco:
I really do like this world.
Marco:
I don't immediately have any ideas for what else I can do with it, but I'm going to keep trying to come up with some because it's just so fun as a nerd to play with this stuff.
Casey:
Yeah, this is super cool.
Casey:
I'm super jealous that you've come up with all this.
John:
2018, year of the shell script, even if it's written in Swift.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So we should do Ask ATP.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
We're starting with, I will let you pronounce this, John, since you put this in show notes.
Marco:
I'm going to go with Hans Scheulian.
Marco:
Wow, I sound different.
Casey:
Well done, John.
Casey:
John put this in the show notes.
Casey:
And the question is, I want to remove clutter and unused old files from my system.
Casey:
However, not delete them.
Casey:
A lot are like the entire Unity or Blender projects I did a few years ago that I don't really need anymore.
Casey:
However, I don't want to just delete them because too frequently I deleted something ancient and needed it half a year later because of something really specific I did there.
Casey:
What should I do?
Casey:
Connect a disk drive every time I want to quote unquote offload something, burn crap loads of CDs or DVDs and pile them in a corner, buy a server and put it on an FTP server somewhere where I dump all those files, get a NAS.
Casey:
I'm looking for a reliable solution that I will still have access to in 20 years.
Casey:
I really think just get an ass is the easy answer to this question, but I'm assuming that you guys have other thoughts.
Casey:
So since John wrote this into the show notes, Marco, do you have any immediate thoughts?
Casey:
Then we'll let John give us the real answer.
Marco:
To me, I've actually recently gone through this a little bit.
Marco:
I mean, first of all, I just told you a reason why.
Marco:
I might be having a CD burner on my desk, but...
Marco:
I used to burn first DVD-Rs, and then I got the bright idea in my head a while ago that I should get a Blu-ray burner because that was the next thing after DVDs.
Marco:
And I decided, oh, 25 gigs per disc, and then later even more.
Marco:
That would be great.
Marco:
I can burn archive discs of all my important files and have this master set of backups in this big CD box in the closet or whatever else.
Marco:
And I, I started that.
Marco:
I did that for a little while, but it turns out 25 gigs isn't that much anymore.
Marco:
And even when the, the fancier, like multi-layer discs came out like a couple of years back, uh, even they, you know, they're still not really enough to be useful.
Marco:
And it turns out Blu-ray burners are finicky and they're a pain and they're unreliable.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
And the world of Blu-ray burning discs is unreliable.
Marco:
There's lots of different formats.
Marco:
The burners don't always burn them all similarly or are compatible with them.
Marco:
So you basically have this array of what's really quite obscure formats.
Marco:
The idea of being able to read them in 20 years has a number of problems.
Marco:
Whatever disc format you're writing is not a Blu-ray movie.
Marco:
It's not a Blu-ray disc.
Marco:
And it's very possible that any drive you can find in 20 years might not actually read that physical format.
Marco:
The second problem you're going to have is that optical discs deteriorate.
Marco:
They are all based on organic dyes and certain assumptions that over time have proven to not always be the case.
Marco:
Even today, we're a good 15 years past the heyday of CDRs.
Marco:
If you still have CDRs in your closet somewhere, you might not be able to read them anymore.
Marco:
They actually might have deteriorated to the point where you can't read them.
Marco:
Same thing with most DVDs.
Marco:
DVDs were a little better because they sandwiched the organic layer between two pieces of plastic instead of just having it on the top the way CDs did.
Marco:
So they had a little more protection.
Marco:
There's still, like, deterioration of the dyes and layers that happens.
Marco:
And so it's very light.
Marco:
Like, the initial estimates of how long recordable media was supposed to last, many of them have not been achieved.
Marco:
And they've had to revise those estimates to be like, oh, actually, these don't last 50 or 100 years or 1,000 years.
Marco:
They actually might last, like, five years.
Marco:
And so you have reliability issues there.
Marco:
There actually was – there's one type of Blu-ray disc called M-Disc that was supposed to last for a millennium, supposed to last 1,000 years.
Marco:
And I actually bought – I still have a spindle in my closet that I bought aspirationally thinking I would use them, and I never did.
Marco:
It's still unopened.
Marco:
I almost threw it away last week.
Marco:
Because it's supposed to solve this problem.
Marco:
But optical disks are not as reliable and long-lasting as we think they are.
Marco:
They have proven that so far.
Marco:
And even this M disk that's supposed to last forever and be for archival purposes, they're brand new, relatively speaking.
Marco:
And so we don't actually know.
Marco:
Everyone thought that recordable CDs and DVDs would last a long time too, and they didn't.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
You can try to simulate some things here and there, but it's not always dependable.
Marco:
And the other thing is, again, are you going to be able to find a drive in 20 years that can read these discs?
Marco:
I think that's fairly unlikely.
Marco:
You might be able to find a drive that reads Blu-rays, but it might not read these Blu-rays or whatever else.
Marco:
I think your options are going to be...
Marco:
fairly weak there.
Marco:
Your best option here is to use hard drives and every few years when you get larger ones move the stuff to the larger ones.
Marco:
Because the only way to keep data like this really preserved long term is to take it with you.
Marco:
To move it periodically to the new setup.
Marco:
And
Marco:
If you don't do that, you are reliant on certain technologies being very long-lasting and being able to be read forever, and that's just unlikely to be true.
Marco:
Meanwhile, hard drives are huge and relatively cost nothing for the amount of storage you get.
Marco:
You can get such large drives now that if you are offloading what used to be considered large files five, ten years ago,
Marco:
Today, you can get one hard drive for $200 or less that can hold all of them, probably plus a lot of extra space.
Marco:
So that's my recommended solution is use hard drives somehow, whether that's in a NAS or whether that's just external disks that you plug in once a year to check them and move them onto new ones.
Marco:
And also, by the way, have some redundancy here.
Marco:
Like, one external drive, having your only copy of something is still just one disk.
Marco:
And that disk can fail and you can lose everything.
Marco:
So, you know, have things on multiple disks.
Marco:
But the overarching answer to this question is don't just leave them in a box for 20 years.
Marco:
Keep them moving with you as technology moves on, as drives get bigger, as your setups change.
Marco:
And then down the road, you know, maybe just move them into cloud storage.
John:
Yeah, that pretty much covers it.
John:
The only thing I would add is if you really want to go for, like, how do I do that?
John:
How do I keep the data moving in my large current set while making sure I have redundancy?
John:
So you want it to be your currently active pile of data.
John:
You want that currently active pile of data.
John:
to be backed up and you want it to be stored on some kind of thing that has like checksumming right whether that's a file system or a device or some other facility to prevent bit rot because that's your only remaining enemy once you have the data with you active constantly moving to bigger and bigger storage just gotta always keep it moving bit rot is your enemy because you're just moving it over the course of a decade and if the bits are slowly rotting by the time you go to pull something out it could be corrupted especially if it's something you know like a
John:
uh, some particular file format or whatever that's sensitive to a bit flipped here or there.
John:
Uh, so yeah, I mean, it's difficult to do, but that's, you know, I wish there was an easier answer like Marco's special magic Blu-ray discs, but there's not, you just gotta, you just gotta have it all in your currently active set of data and it has to be backed up and redundant and you have to keep it moving.
Casey:
Moving on.
Casey:
Lewis Thompson writes, the Switch has shown that people are willing to pay for full-blown console games on the go.
Casey:
Why are there no AAA games for iOS or tvOS?
Casey:
Is it just down to lack of bundled controllers or docks?
Casey:
Maybe, but to me, the obvious answer to this question is nobody wants to pay a dollar for anything on iOS.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Why would somebody want to pay $60 of their dollars for something on iOS?
Casey:
Is there more to this than that, John?
John:
Well, I mean, there's lots of different factors.
John:
The controller thing is definitely a big one.
John:
I don't think the pricing is that big a deal.
John:
Didn't Civilization come out for iPad and it was like $60?
John:
It's not like you can't put them at that price.
John:
It's just a question of do the people who want to play that much money for, I mean, this person says AAA games, what they mean are AAA games as they have existed on PC and consoles, which I think is a more, it's a different definition than just saying AAA games because you might think, well, that just means good games.
John:
There are tons of good games on iOS.
John:
And you could say maybe they're not as expansive because they have to be sold for $2 or something like that.
John:
But I think they're very good games.
John:
I don't think length determines the value of a game.
John:
But they mean AAA games in the PC console sense, which implies a certain amount of production value, a certain amount of content.
John:
And the people who want to play those games...
John:
aren't on ios and tvos waiting patiently to pay you 60 for that they have consoles they have pcs that's where they are that's where they want to play their games so making a 60 game and putting it on ios or tvos is not going to get people to buy that game not because it's a bad game or people don't want to pay 60 take that exact same game and
John:
and offer it on a console and or PC and or Steam or whatever, and it will sell.
John:
It's the same game in both places, and there's nothing other than the lack of controller and the lack of Apple-according game developers in the same way that console makers do and Microsoft does, right?
John:
There's nothing preventing that game from...
John:
working fine on those on on those platforms i mean most of apple stuff is probably more powerful than the switch uh it's just a question of of where the people are uh and the hardware definitely has something to do with it but it also has to do with just habits and where people where people want to play their games takes a long time to dislodge somebody like if you're a pc gamer what's going to get you off that pc if you're a console gamer what's going to get you off that console onto
John:
tv os a thing that doesn't ship with a controller that doesn't have a lot of games like it's a lot of it is just plain inertia so it's not that apple couldn't go for it i mean apple could have made something like the switch long ago or could turn tv os into something like a television stranded switch in that it is like a not too powerful console that is small and doesn't require you know humongous fans and a giant embedded hard drive and everything right the ipad could have been the switch
John:
Well, yeah, less so because it's less natural pairing with a controller, but Apple just didn't pursue that strategy, which is fine.
John:
Apple will happily sell millions and millions of 99-cent games or free-to-play games that fleece a bunch of people for $20,000 until they go bankrupt and lose their house.
John:
But...
John:
I don't want to say it's mostly cultural, but that's what I feel about.
John:
The technological questions and even the consumer questions are not where it's at.
John:
It's about the culture.
John:
And the platform owners have to be motivated to change the culture.
John:
And honestly, I'm not sure if Apple...
John:
if it would be a good move for apple to do that we always say you know the gaming market is there for apple to take it but they're taking a different slice of the gaming market and who's to say that apple you know we put all this stock in like oh triple a games as they exist on pc and consoles but that's just our where we're coming from culturally that we think those are the big games but are those companies more successful in making more money than apple's currently making selling one dollar games it really depends on what your value i continue to think apple doesn't understand games
John:
and doesn't really care about them.
John:
And so I think it's perfectly natural for the games and the game customers to go elsewhere.
Marco:
Yeah, I think you pretty much covered it.
Marco:
I would just add that I do think there's a lot of value in the limited number of games that's available on a game console.
Marco:
Like if you buy a Switch and you want to play some games on it, well, you don't have 10 billion games available for free to a dollar to choose from there.
Marco:
you have a vastly smaller number.
Marco:
Even when there's a lot of games for a console, it's still a vastly smaller number compared to what you have on iOS.
Marco:
And those games have been vetted to a much larger degree.
Marco:
The quality standards that are enforced by a company like Nintendo or Sony or Microsoft for their consoles are way higher and way more strict than what Apple enforces in the App Store.
Marco:
So there's a certain minimum barrier there.
Marco:
And honestly, it's not so great for inclusion and diversity of game makers, but it's also usually more expensive to develop these platforms, or at least there's barriers in place.
Marco:
It's not as easy as signing up for an Apple developer membership.
Marco:
And sometimes it's more expensive as well.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
There are these barriers in place to getting the games onto these platforms.
Marco:
There are much higher restrictions put in place by the vendors of these platforms.
Marco:
And all the games on these platforms are, you know, by iOS standards, extraordinarily expensive by being like, you know, $15 and up, basically.
Marco:
You know, a good AAA game is $50 or $60.
Marco:
And, you know, even the indie games, you know, like Stardew Valley or even some of the smaller ones, they're like, you know, $10, $15, et cetera.
John:
well bringing up stardew valley that's a good point because on the pc that that has all the advantages of ios anyone can make one it's much more open you don't have to get an sdk from nintendo or sony or microsoft uh you know as you pointed out when you talked about stardew valley was made by one person no one was stopping him from doing that he didn't get have to get app store approval to make it he did have to get on steam which is kind of app story but there's no reason he couldn't have just sold that on his own website with stripe or paypal or whatever
John:
um so it has all almost all the advantages of ios in terms of openness depending on where you go but you know it has the console side very curated very very narrow very simple to choose from and console gamers are the people who go in that direction and pc gamers are the people who say yeah but i want all the choice of steam including all the crap weird games for the chance to be the first person to play stardew valley because i'm assuming the pc version came out first just because that's the easiest platform to develop for if you're a single developer you're not going to be dealing with
John:
Sony or Microsoft or Nintendo's BS to get your game off the ground.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And also, because the game consoles have so many fewer games, and because the standard is so much higher, and because there's basically a much smaller number of
Marco:
generally much better games on the consoles than you have on iOS.
Marco:
That also means that the promotion is very different.
Marco:
The storefront is very different.
Marco:
You don't have... In the App Store on iOS, you're competing against everything in the world.
Marco:
Whereas if you go on a Switch and you go to the eShop on Switch...
Marco:
Your only choices are premium-priced games.
Marco:
Whether that's $15 or $60, those are your only choices.
Marco:
And because the standards are higher, the whole market behaves differently.
Marco:
First of all, you can go to reviews and you can see how good they are, but you can also probably just...
Marco:
buy a game that, like, when Mario Odyssey came out, we just bought it.
Marco:
Because we knew, like, chances are this is going to be a very good game.
Marco:
Because of reputation of Nintendo, and what we heard about it, and things like that.
Marco:
On iOS, you just don't really have that as much.
Marco:
And you're battling with everything else.
Marco:
And consumers, if you go to the App Store and a game is priced at $40 or more, like...
Marco:
You're never going to drop that on an iOS game because your expectations of whether that's going to be worth it or good or not are, by necessity, way lower.
Marco:
The reality is the App Store ecosystem on all sides is...
Marco:
set up to incentivize and reward certain types of behavior and it's you know it culminates in these free-to-play social manipulation games and that's what the app store encourages that's what it gets like it's like that the entire store is set up in a way that encourages promotes and rewards the
Marco:
abusive in-app purchase free games and so that's what they're going to get tons of and that's going to succeed that's what apple's going to promote because it sells more their devices to have all these you know free allegedly games and you know it's it's a vicious cycle i don't see how they break out of that
Marco:
I also would not discount the controller question too much, because there's a lot of game types that gamers who are willing to pay $60 for a game enjoy playing that either are unplayable or really inferior on a touchscreen.
Marco:
Now granted, there's also types of games that work on a touchscreen that would suck on a console, but the fact remains that there's a lot of very popular, established AAA game types that
Marco:
that are very cumbersome to play on a touchscreen without some other kind of controller or mouse or something.
Marco:
And so I think that also plays into it to a lesser degree.
Marco:
But I think that the bigger problem is simply that difference in the marketplace and the styles of how you buy games, what games are available to buy, how you find them, how they're promoted, what your other options are on those platforms, etc.
Marco:
If I don't buy a $60 game on my Switch...
Marco:
There's not much more I can do with the Switch.
Marco:
You know, but, like, if I don't buy, you know, a $60 game on the iPad, I have 10 billion free games to choose from instead.
Marco:
And so, like, there's a reason why the market goes the way that it goes.
John:
The cultural difference even comes up in the controller thing, right?
John:
So...
John:
Nintendo, when they made their new console, they put a touchscreen on it because they recognize there's a bunch of games that benefit from touchscreens and even just the non-game stuff, like it's nice to have a touchscreen and it's got a controller.
John:
On the flip side, Apple said, oh yeah, we'll have a way you can use controllers with their Apple TVs, but we're not going to build one.
John:
It's a misunderstanding of games.
John:
If you're making a game thing, you're like, we should put a touchscreen on it just in case someone wants to make a touchscreen game.
John:
But they won't be able to use it when it's hooked up to their TV.
John:
Yeah, but we're still putting it on there.
John:
We should just do it because we care about games.
John:
And maybe there's some awesome game that we don't want to miss out on by not having a touchscreen, even though you can't use it when it's hooked up to the TV and we're making this console that can go in both places.
John:
Just put the touchscreen in.
John:
Whereas Apple can't even bring themselves to make their own controller, let alone bundle a third-party controller with it.
John:
They're just like, well, we'll sell third-party controllers in our stores.
John:
And if someone wants one, they can get it.
John:
And, you know, they flip-flopped on whether you're allowed to require it in games.
John:
It just shows that Apple's, you know, just not that into games and just doesn't have the mindset that a real game maker would have, which is like, can we conceive of a cool game being made by this?
John:
Oh, look at all these touch games on those platforms.
John:
We should make sure we're not excluded from that.
John:
So please put a touchscreen on the Switch.
John:
And they did.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Hover, Squarespace, and Fracture.
Marco:
We will see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin because it was accidental.
John:
Accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
John:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them.
Marco:
At C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss.
Marco:
M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-E-N-T.
Marco:
Marco Arment.
John:
S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
So apparently, if you really want to get things done, you should have a baby.
John:
Because as soon as you have a baby, you'll write a Mac application and do a YouTube video.
John:
And who knows what case we'll be doing next.
John:
He's just got all this free time.
John:
He just needs to fill with new hobbies.
Marco:
Yeah, so tell us about this.
Marco:
So you reviewed an SUV somehow?
Yeah.
Casey:
We actually talked about this on the forthcoming episode of Analog, which, as we talked tonight, is not released and will probably be released after this episode of ATP is because that's the schedule we're on.
Casey:
But I had the car, was it last week, I believe?
Casey:
An Alfa Romeo Stelvio, which is their new, more reasonably new SUV.
Casey:
And they were like, hey, we can give it to you mid-January.
Casey:
And I was like, ooh, uh...
Casey:
Sure, I guess, because I know I'm going to be home, but that's going to be a busy time.
Casey:
So I'll just see what I can do.
Casey:
And in short, it was actually a really nice truck.
Casey:
Like trucks are not my thing.
Casey:
And somebody pointed out via Twitter, you know, I'm saying that despite saying, oh, I'm probably going to buy a Wrangler soon.
Casey:
But generally speaking, trucks are not my thing.
Casey:
But this thing, and actually a lot of people wouldn't even call it a truck, but that's neither here nor there.
Casey:
But whatever.
Casey:
A tall car is not usually my thing.
Casey:
But this was actually really nice.
Casey:
There are some problems with it, but all told, it was reasonably quick, handled stunningly well for a car that's that tall.
Casey:
And I really liked it.
Casey:
Like, I don't know if this would be what I would choose if I were to buy a car, but I can see how one could end up with this over like an X3 or an Audi Q5 or something like that.
Marco:
Cool.
Marco:
Well, I really enjoyed your video.
Marco:
Oh, thank you.
Marco:
I don't really have any opinion about the car, but you continue to be like frustratingly improving quickly at making videos.
Marco:
Like you started out way better than I thought you would.
Marco:
No, no offense.
Marco:
Like I just thought it was a hard problem.
Marco:
And then, you know, video two is even better.
Marco:
And so, yeah, pretty cool.
Casey:
Well, thanks.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, I'm pretty proud of the video.
Casey:
There's definitely problems, don't get me wrong.
Casey:
It is not flawless by any means.
Casey:
But I am pretty pleased with how it turned out.
Casey:
And I feel like I've made a lot of positive steps.
Casey:
And again, there's going to be a fairly in-depth discussion about this on Analog.
Casey:
We'll talk about it.
Casey:
I mean, I'll link it in the show notes.
Casey:
But if you're listening to this, you may or may not be able to click that link and get to anything because the Analog episode isn't out yet.
Casey:
But no, I'm pretty pleased with the video.
Casey:
It was shorter, which I think was good.
Casey:
I probably still could have cut something from it.
Casey:
And there were probably some places where I could have tightened it up a little bit.
Casey:
But all told, I'm pretty darn pleased with how it came out.
Casey:
I think the biggest issues with the prior video with the Julia...
Casey:
Um, were, were that I was not particularly effusive or maybe, maybe not effusive, but I wasn't particularly, um, interesting.
Casey:
I guess you could say like I was kind of monotone and kind of, uh, just there.
Casey:
And additionally, the audio was just garbage as we talked about ad nauseum previously.
Casey:
Now the audio, excepting one section, I think was pretty darn good.
Casey:
I definitely clipped in a few spots, which was unfortunate, but all told, it was pretty good.
Casey:
And I think I was a much more interesting person to watch this time, which is also good.
Casey:
But there's still plenty of room to be improved.
Casey:
You could see me in the reflection of the car in a bunch of spots, which in a perfect world wouldn't have happened.
Casey:
There was some video I shot that
Casey:
Before I had a chance to very, very quickly wash the car because it rained like the day after I got it or something like that.
Casey:
So it was dirty in a few of the shots, which in a perfect world I wouldn't have done.
Casey:
In one of the shots, I didn't realize that my bucket of equipment was in the background, which I regret.
Casey:
But I mean, I'm not going to sit there and like Photoshop it out or anything like that.
Casey:
So.
Casey:
All told, I'm really pleased with the video.
Casey:
The car was very, very nice.
Casey:
If you wanted something that's more interesting than like an X3, I think it's a very reasonable choice.
Casey:
This particular car was mildly optioned and it priced at about $55,000.
Casey:
And there are some things that I really wish it had, like I wish it had a little bit of autonomous driving capability.
Casey:
I very much wish it had CarPlay.
Casey:
And I think there is either an option package where it could have had CarPlay or it's coming soon.
Casey:
I'm not entirely clear based on Alfa Romeo's website, but I couldn't figure out a way to turn it on on this particular car.
Casey:
You know, all told, it was a very, very nice car that if you wanted something more interesting than just another X3, I could see going for this.
John:
cool yeah any other thoughts john i'm surprised you're so quiet you haven't told me how ugly this is yet it's i think it actually is less ugly than julia oh really because it's an suv but when i compare it to its contemporaries and not compare it to actual cars uh the x3 is just gross all those little luxury sport utility vehicles are mostly gross the audi ones are okay infinity ones are horrendous anyway
John:
I was surprised you didn't compare it to the Volvo.
John:
I mean, I know you haven't done the Volvo video yet, but it's the other SUV thing that you have the most experience with and it's similar price range.
John:
So, I mean, you kind of alluded to it like, look, if I spent this much money, I would want it to be nicer inside.
John:
Probably, you know, I'm thinking like, well, the Volvo is probably nicer inside than this thing.
Casey:
Oh, very much so.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And it's similar price and also bigger.
John:
And so you're trading a lot.
John:
It seemed like.
Casey:
down market in exchange for sportiness i was surprised at how much headroom it seemed to have that was pretty nice but even with the sunroof thing it seemed like you had enough room to put a helmet on in there you could fit your tall hair and i do have tall hair but i mean again i've never really had an interference fit with my head in a sunroof so um i i can't say that i'm surprised by that i don't think i'm a good judge of these things in some of the footage that i filmed i did make direct comparisons to aaron's car but
Casey:
Part of the reason I left that out, well, a lot of it was that was early on.
Casey:
And basically, I'd never come up with a formal script for anything I record.
Casey:
I do have some broad talking points that I think through when I'm recording, but I don't have a script or anything like that.
Casey:
And so footage that I filmed early in the week, I made a lot of comparisons to Aaron's car, but it just seemed like that wasn't terribly relevant because, as you said, John, like I haven't formally reviewed Aaron's car.
Casey:
And so I think when I do the video review of Aaron's car, I will probably make some comparisons to the Stelvio.
Casey:
But I think to do that in the reverse order would have been ill-suited.
Casey:
But yeah, I think you hit the nail on the head.
Casey:
Aaron's car is not particularly sporty.
Casey:
Given that it's a freaking whale, Aaron's car moves pretty well, but it's not fast.
Casey:
This thing felt actually reasonably quick and handled really well, all told.
Casey:
I was very, very surprised by that.
Casey:
And so I think you're right in saying that you would give up some luxury in moving from a Volvo XC90 or perhaps an XC60, which is a more direct competitor, to
Casey:
to this you would give up a little bit of luxury but you would gain a lot of sportiness um i haven't tried the xc60 the brand new xc60 because that just got revamped this year to be basically a mini version of aaron's car but another part of the reason why i didn't think it was a fair comparison is because this is more x3 whereas the the xc90 that we have is more like an x5 or even a quote unquote x7 if you will because it's you know ours is three row whereas i don't
Casey:
think you can get an X5 with a third row and even if you can it's it's not really a direct competitor in my personal opinion even though maybe like officially speaking it is so I didn't think a lot of direct comparisons would make sense but yes very much Aaron's car is very much more luxurious this car is very much more sporty
John:
I think this whole class of car, the sporty, small, medium, small SUV is incredibly stupid.
John:
Most adequately pointed out in your video by the tiny slit of a back window.
John:
It's like, come on.
John:
It's already big.
John:
You could have just made a wagon or a car, but instead you made this big shoe thing and then it has bad visibility out the back and no luggage space.
John:
And it's just like, what are you even doing?
John:
It's like you just take a regular car that has...
John:
like if you just had regular car proportions the trunk would be bigger the visibility would be better the handling would be better what would you be losing off-road ability would you be losing that forget it like it's ridiculous they just make cars uglier and worse for no reason and people like to buy them because they sit up high so i'm just angry about that whole class of cars but
Marco:
It's the continued ridiculous contortions Americans will do to not buy a wagon.
Casey:
Yeah, it's true.
Casey:
But anyway, I don't know.
Casey:
I'm pretty pleased with the video.
Casey:
Again, I'm not saying it's perfect.
Casey:
By no means am I saying it's perfect.
Casey:
There are plenty of things I would change about it if I had infinite time and infinite budget and so on and so forth.
Casey:
But I am pretty proud of it.
Casey:
I am very glad to have had the car.
Casey:
I think it's a neat car even though it's not for me.
Casey:
And the question I'm trying to figure out or the thing I'm trying to answer is, you know, how can I get something other than an Alfa Romeo to play with?
Casey:
And yes, some listeners have offered their cars, but I had this thing for a week and I barely had enough time to film and photograph what I wanted.
Casey:
So even though there are some people, even locally, you have a newborn.
Casey:
Well, again, I mean, it's not just having a newborn.
Casey:
There's good reasons.
Casey:
But even so, like even so, like with the Julia, well, granted, I was working at that point, but I don't think I would have the time or ability to pull a Doug DeMuro, which from what I understand, like he shows up, he uses a car for a couple hours or something like that, records and disappears.
Casey:
Like I am nowhere near that.
Casey:
And so in order for me to be able to do another car, I need to have something that I'll have, like, significant amounts of time with.
Casey:
So some listeners have been just kind enough to offer me, hey, you know, if I'm ever in Richmond, I'll let you know, which, yes, please do.
Casey:
Or, you know, hey, if you want to borrow the car for a couple hours, feel free, which is super kind of these people, but it's not enough for me.
Casey:
Like, it should be enough, but it isn't.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
I'm trying to figure out, like, what's the next step?
Casey:
I did email the Tesla PR people and have gotten no response, which is completely expected, asking them to give me anything that they would be willing to give me.
Casey:
But even, like, if Underscore drove his car down for a day, like, I would need more than, I think, just a weekend with his car to be able to get what I wanted out of it and to really understand it from the perspective of a driver rather than a passenger.
Casey:
So...
Casey:
I don't know what the mechanism is to branch out other than just using cars that are in my life, like Aaron's car, like potentially my car, like my dad's Corvette, if he'll ever give me the keys ever.
Casey:
But we'll see what happens.
Casey:
It's a tough nut to crack.
Casey:
But no matter what...
Casey:
And we talked about this a lot on Analog.
Casey:
It's still fun.
Casey:
And I'm not making money off of it at this point.
Casey:
And that's unfortunate, but OK.
Casey:
And to be honest, I wouldn't really be making more than like a Panera Bread meal worth of money off of this level of viewership anyway.
Casey:
So I'm not really losing, if you will, much of anything.
Casey:
But it's been fun.
Casey:
And I've been scratching a creative itch that I've never scratched before.
Casey:
So that feels real good, too.
Marco:
Yeah, and keep in mind, the reason why somebody like this Demura character can do this is he's been doing this so long that he knows how to get what he needs quickly from the shots and everything.
Marco:
So by doing this more, you will take less time in the future.
Marco:
As you get better at this, you'll also get faster at it.
Casey:
Oh, yeah, the turnaround on this was way quicker because I had the video done within a couple of days.
Casey:
I think it was the day after.
Casey:
Was it?
Casey:
Was it?
Casey:
No, it was the day I gave the car back, I think, because it wasn't yesterday.
Casey:
It was the day before.
Casey:
Right.
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
It was yesterday.
Casey:
Actually, it was it was yesterday morning.
Casey:
It was the Tuesday morning.
Casey:
So within a day of the car going back, I had the video done.
Casey:
Whereas with the Giulia, it was like two weeks later or something like that.
Casey:
It was maybe even more than that.
Casey:
It was quite a while later.
Casey:
So, yes, you're absolutely right that.
Casey:
That I'm getting quicker, and I like to think I'm getting better at it, but I'm still not at the point that I could have, let's say for the sake of discussion, underscore come down on a Saturday morning and run around with me all day, and I would have enough footage and thoughts completed in order to have what I needed in the span of that one day.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So the cars that you can get for a few days from your family and yourself and everything, like...
Marco:
How many videos do you think you'd have to make before you might be at that point where you can get what you need in a day?
Marco:
That answer might be the number of cars you actually have pretty long access to.
Marco:
If you actually would do videos for your car, Aaron's car, one of your dad's cars at least, that's three more videos.
Marco:
You might actually be fast enough then to be able to borrow a Tesla from a friend for a day and get what you need.
Casey:
Perhaps, yeah.
Casey:
And it's also, you know, it's really squishy.
Casey:
Like, even if I get to the point that I'm quick enough to do it like that, it's still an odd thing taking, like, a random person's car.
Casey:
Because even if it's a listener who knows me and, you know, likes me enough to hand me the keys to their car, like, that becomes really squishy because what happens if I get in, like, a humongous car accident while driving their car?
Casey:
Like, what is that about?
Casey:
Because this is sort of kind of a business thing that I'm doing, yet it's not really...
Casey:
You know, so, like, do I need business insurance?
Casey:
Like, how does that work?
Casey:
And I'm not really looking to answer this question right now, but there's a whole lot of, like, squishiness involved when it's not a personal friend or family member.
Casey:
And that's what makes it a little weird and difficult.
Casey:
And, you know, I've exchanged a couple of tweets with DeMuro, so maybe I could ask him, like, how does this work?
Casey:
And he would probably tell me, well, it's part of his job now.
Casey:
And so, you know, what is it, auto trader that he works for?
Casey:
So it would, you know, maybe auto trader foots an insurance plan or rider policy, whatever the terminology is, in order to let this happen.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I'm talking about step 304.
Casey:
I'm on step three.
Casey:
So all I'm trying to say is I'm having fun.
Casey:
And even if even if nothing comes of this, it's been an enjoyable experience that I don't regret yet.
John:
I have some concerns about you looking at the camera while you're driving.
John:
Keep your eyes on the road.
Casey:
I glance at the camera.
John:
Come on.
John:
Just look at the road.
John:
We don't need to see you.
John:
Watch the road.
John:
Every time you look at the camera, I'll look back forward, look back forward, look back forward.
John:
The nervousness I don't have when I'm watching TV or movies because I know that they're on a trailer or it's all CG or whatever, but I know you're on an actual road and there's nothing being fake.
John:
So look at the road.
Casey:
all I really wanted in the grand scheme of things is to just make positive improvements, right?
Casey:
Like I just want to, I want it to be clear to me and to a viewer that I am, I am trending upwards, I guess, or, you know, that, that I'm making that, that things are getting better with each video.
Casey:
And that's all I can really hope and ask for.
Casey:
And so far I think I've achieved it.
Casey:
So, uh, you know, that's a success.
Marco:
Awesome.
Marco:
Well, congratulations.
Marco:
Thanks.
Marco:
I agree.
Marco:
I think you have achieved that.
Marco:
Good luck with the next one.
Marco:
Do you have to have another kid to make another one?
Casey:
Yeah, I don't know.
Casey:
I have no idea.
Casey:
I don't know how that's going to work.
Casey:
One way or another, there will be another one.
Casey:
I think part of the problem, and again, this is discussed on Analog, but I really need that time constraint.
Casey:
When I only have a week to get all the footage I need, I really need to make it count.
Casey:
And the problem with Aaron's car is that it's always here.
Casey:
I need to just set myself a schedule or a due date or something for her video or the video of her car so that that compels me to get off my lazy tuchus and actually record some footage for that.
Casey:
Because if I don't have that thing chasing me, it's never going to get done.
Casey:
But we'll see.
Casey:
How long ago was your first video?
Casey:
Like five or six weeks ago?
Casey:
Yeah, something like that.
Casey:
It was end of November, I believe, that it was released.
Casey:
I think it was like the 22nd of November.
Casey:
So yeah, it was like a couple of months.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So set yourself a calendar reminder for four weeks from now and say it has to be done by then.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And that's really what I should do, especially since right after that is when I'm going back to work.
Marco:
There you go.
Casey:
We'll see.
Casey:
That's your deadline.
Casey:
Yeah, I know.
Casey:
I know.
Casey:
I know.
Marco:
And now the only way to procrastinate is by not going back to work.
Casey:
I see where this is going.
Casey:
If only I could pay myself as much as I want to to hire myself to do the stupid work I'm doing.
Marco:
If only there was a way for other people to pay you to do work for them.
Marco:
Can you imagine?
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
It's this crazy new business idea called working as maybe, I don't know, how about a consultist?
Marco:
A consultist.
Marco:
I like it.
Marco:
I like it.
Marco:
No, that's a little awkward.
Marco:
How about consultant?
Marco:
Is that a better version of that word?
Marco:
Let's go with consultant.
Marco:
Yeah, something like that.
Marco:
If only that existed as a thing you could do.
Casey:
If only.