Seven-Dollar Plastic Garbage
Casey:
So anyway, so what'd you order at Shake Shack?
Casey:
I'm still jealous.
Marco:
So Tiff and I have, you know, we go on special occasions sometimes to Shake Shack.
Marco:
Normally our order is a Shack Burger each, which is the cheeseburger, like the basic, like one patty cheeseburger, which is somewhat small.
Marco:
So a Shack Burger each, we share an order of cheese fries and we share a black and white shake.
Marco:
Solid.
Marco:
Today we decide, because every time when you finish that burger,
Marco:
because it's such a good burger but it's also a relatively small burger every time you order that you think i wonder if i could have gotten away with a second burger you should not be thinking that so today we decided to splurge being that it's valentine's day this is our special trip to the city just to eat shake shack and we got three burgers and we cut the third one in half so we each had 1.5 burgers that is actually a very good choice
Marco:
Yeah, and it turned out we were pretty full, but it was not like a mistake.
John:
Well, you really, you really, you know, stretched yourself out a little bit with all the top four episodes.
John:
Now you're able to handle that much food.
John:
Yeah, exactly.
Casey:
Oh, goodness.
Casey:
There's no Shake Shack anywhere near me.
Casey:
I think the nearest one is in D.C., which is like a two-hour drive, and it makes me so sad because...
Casey:
You know, as with, what is it, In-N-Out?
Casey:
Like, In-N-Out, I think, is very tasty, but a little bit overrated.
Casey:
And I think with Shake Shack, I would say it's less overrated.
Casey:
But what I'm driving at is that some of the appeal is that it is not proximate.
Casey:
Is that the word I'm looking for?
Casey:
It's not near me.
Casey:
And so because it's not near me, I seek it and yearn for it in a way that I very much do for In-N-Out, even though I would say, like, you know, In-N-Out is good, where Shake Shack is great.
John:
I'm surprised you asked Marco what he got at Shake Shack because there's like nothing on that menu.
Marco:
They expanded it quite a bit over the last couple of years.
Marco:
As they've expanded.
Marco:
Expanded it to what?
Marco:
Well, there's like burgers.
Marco:
I think there's a chicken sandwich now.
Marco:
There was always the mushroom vegetarian burger.
John:
You have a chicken sandwich?
Marco:
I think there's a chicken option now.
Marco:
We don't have a chicken sandwich.
John:
There's hot dogs.
John:
There's a lot.
John:
I know about the hot dog.
John:
They've got like two kinds of burgers, a hot dog, a bunch of different kinds of shakes, and fries that are not good.
John:
And the mushroom burger.
John:
Don't forget that.
Marco:
a bunch of different kinds of burgers i get the shack burger too because it's like that's you know there's just no variety which is fine i like the burger it's a good burger but uh in and out has better fries i don't think i've had in and out before i have had five guys there's those around here and i find them incredibly disappointing um i don't i don't think five guys is even in the same league like to me five guys i'd rather just have like mcdonald's or burger king or wendy's like it's it's in that it's at that level way you're insane five guys is so much better than mcdonald's or
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So hold on.
Casey:
So Five Guys, if I'm not mistaken, started either in Virginia, in the D.C.
Casey:
suburbs or in D.C.
Casey:
proper.
Casey:
And so I feel some amount of need to defend Five Guys.
Casey:
Five Guys to me is the kind of burger you have once a year because it is – here's a Simpsons reference for you, John.
Marco:
Because it takes you a year to forget how bad it is and how worth it it isn't?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Maybe.
John:
It's not bad.
Casey:
It's not that it's bad.
John:
It's different than Shake Shack, and Shake Shack is better, but Five Guys, I think, is pretty good.
John:
No, it's not.
Casey:
Five Guys is good.
Casey:
So here's the thing.
Casey:
With Five Guys, though, is that it's so unbelievably and unabashedly greasy.
Casey:
Not to say it's not tasty, but it's so greasy.
Casey:
I don't think so.
John:
I think Shake Shack is greasier than Five Guys.
Casey:
Let's see.
Casey:
I haven't had five guys in a while, so maybe you're right.
Casey:
But the point I'm driving at it's like Dr. Nick when he was telling Homer how to get fat and he just like held up a piece of chicken or something like that to the wall or to a piece of paper or something.
Casey:
I don't remember the exact reference, but he basically says, hey, if it's see through, then you can eat it.
Casey:
And that's how you're going to get really fat.
Casey:
I feel like that's I feel like that's five guys.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And so I feel even if I only have like my typical order is a little bacon cheeseburger.
Casey:
And I say that as though I go off and I go again like once a year.
Casey:
But I feel like after I have my little bacon cheeseburger and fries, I feel like a beach... I love that it's called the little burger.
Marco:
I love that they make you... Trying to shame you into not overeating.
Marco:
They make you say the indignity of, can I have the little burger, please?
Marco:
At Shake Shack, if you just say the Shack Burger, the Shack Burger is available in single or double patty, but the default is single, which is probably what you should get.
Marco:
You don't have to say, can I please have the smallest burger you have, even though that's what it is.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
So anyway, so the point I'm driving at is after I eat one, I or after I eat at five guys, I need like six months to a year to recover because I feel like a beached whale.
John:
You got it.
John:
You got to train yourself up because we get five guys here all the time.
John:
I mean, we have Shake Shack and five guys both close to us.
John:
So we get them both plenty.
John:
And.
John:
Yeah, I think what you're thinking of with the grease bomb is Five Guys fries are just grease bombs and are of varying quality.
John:
And they give you like – that's the thing about Five Guys.
John:
They give you – I think it must be in their manual.
John:
When somebody orders fries, fill up whatever cup size they told you to fill up with fries.
Casey:
And dump more.
John:
But also dump a whole bunch more.
John:
which is fine.
Marco:
Like as far like place it in a bag and then pour more fries on top of it such that the entire bottom of the bag.
Marco:
So your cup of fries is padded from damage by other fries.
John:
And I think that's a good corporate policy because potatoes are cheap.
John:
Right?
John:
I mean, they've got them stacked up in the thing there, and they give you more than you could ever possibly want, and people feel like that's generous, especially for the ridiculous prices everybody charges for these hamburgers, right?
Marco:
It seems like Five Guys fans rave about their fries a lot.
Marco:
Honestly, I find them absolutely nothing special.
Marco:
And maybe this is just because the Five Guys nearest to us, maybe it's just a terrible location.
Marco:
Like, maybe it's just a bad Five Guys.
Marco:
But again, one area where I think Shake Shack has done very well is that so far I've eaten at...
Marco:
probably five or six distinct Shake Shack locations, and they are remarkably consistent.
Marco:
They've all been consistently good for me.
Marco:
Everything tastes like exactly the same.
John:
What are your Shake Shack fries?
John:
What kind are they?
John:
Because they've changed them, and it might be location-specific.
Marco:
We have, I guess, what used to be the only kind, which is they almost look like frozen crinkle-cut fries.
John:
Yep, all right.
John:
That's what we have, too.
John:
But they went to shoestring for a while near us, and it was grim.
John:
No, that's bad.
John:
That's bad.
John:
They can be good, but theirs weren't.
John:
Theirs were not good, so they changed back.
John:
But I think the critical cut fries are not particularly good.
Marco:
Oh, I think they're wonderful.
Marco:
To me, like Shake Shack fries, they taste like frozen fries from your childhood, except done really well.
Marco:
And also, I don't find them greasy really at all.
Marco:
Like, you know, beyond what, you know, the minimum required to deep fry something.
Marco:
But like, you know, where Five Guys fries, I feel like could make a piece of paper clear by just going near that piece of paper.
Marco:
Shake Shack fries really don't seem greasy.
John:
At least Five Guys has the Cajun option if you get sick of the regular fries.
Marco:
Yeah, but Shake Shack fries are so good you don't get sick of them.
Marco:
You just put cheese on top of them.
Marco:
And the cheese fries are really good.
Marco:
No, the cheese is gross.
Marco:
It's like Cheez Whiz.
Marco:
It's Casey's Velveeta.
Marco:
It's terrible.
Marco:
No, but it's kind of...
Marco:
It's lighter in color than a slice of American cheese or most nacho cheese sauce.
Marco:
It's cheese food.
Marco:
It's definitely some kind of... Well, it is because it melts very well.
Marco:
But it's a really nice, somewhat mild cheese sauce.
Marco:
The distribution is always really nice.
Marco:
And they give you that little wooden stick to pick up the fries with.
Marco:
It's so good.
Casey:
I'm with Marco on this.
Casey:
However, I do need to also bring up, for those of us who are from...
John:
Mr. Velveeta loves the fake cheese surprise.
Casey:
Yeah, well, I know.
Casey:
Nobody's surprised.
Casey:
I also need to bring up, for those of you who live south of the Mason-Dixon, specifically in or around North Carolina, there's a chain called Cookout, wherein you can get a truly heinous amount of food for a hilariously small amount of money in
Casey:
And if you've never experienced cookout but have the opportunity, you need to try it.
Casey:
In cookout, their burgers taste, guess what, like you had just cooked them at a cookout.
Casey:
Or as some people, where is it that they call any sort of like picnic-y cookout thing a barbecue, which is completely bananas?
Casey:
Is that the Northeast?
John:
The whole country except for the South.
Casey:
Oh, God, that's so ridiculous.
Casey:
Barbecue is its own thing.
Casey:
Anyway.
Marco:
So honestly, I got to say, I don't like, and I'm using the lowercase version of the cookout word here, I don't like cookout burgers most of the time.
Marco:
Burgers, in my opinion, are best made on a flat griddle surface, whereas when you put it on the rack of a grill, especially the way most people are just amateur barbecue cooks or grill cooks, whatever word you use for that large metal box that you put hamburgers and hot dogs in,
Marco:
For me, my move is always to go for the hot dogs because, first of all, they're less filling usually.
Marco:
So you can have just one or you can have two depending on how hungry you are.
Marco:
You can have more room for the side dishes, which are always better.
John:
Or one and a half if you're sharing it.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
Thanks.
Marco:
Yeah, it's and hot dogs are pretty much impossible to screw up that badly.
Marco:
Whereas burgers on people's grills are always usually they're way overdone.
Marco:
They're also usually way under seasoned.
Marco:
And a hot dog, you put it on the grill.
Marco:
It's already cooked.
Marco:
You just need to make it warm and maybe get a little bit of like a split on the skin, like a little bit of the bubbliness on the skin from the heat.
Marco:
And that's it.
Marco:
You put it in a bun.
Marco:
You put anything or nothing on it and it's delicious.
Marco:
It totally takes the the barbecue cook out of the equation unless they like seriously horribly burn it.
Marco:
But that's pretty rare and pretty hard to do.
Casey:
Yeah, all I'm saying is if you're ever in a position where you can go visit a cookout, get yourself a cookout tray, I mean, they consider a full quesadilla as a side item.
Casey:
That's all you need to know.
Casey:
That's all you need to know.
Casey:
My whole family can eat there for like under $15.
Casey:
It's ridiculous.
Casey:
I love cookout.
Casey:
God, I love cookout.
Casey:
Anyway, we should probably start the show lest I talk about food for the entire night.
Casey:
Do you want to talk politics?
Casey:
We can do that for a little while because I'm really fired up.
Marco:
I mean, now that we talked like fancy people's burger chains, I feel like politics is a much safer choice.
Casey:
Yeah, probably.
Casey:
Can we just ban all guns?
Casey:
Let's just do that.
Casey:
Can we all agree on that?
Casey:
Good.
Casey:
I'm glad we talked.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Let's start with some follow-up.
Casey:
And I don't want to talk about any of this battery stuff anymore, so one of you do it.
John:
I don't want to either.
John:
Why are we still doing this?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I don't care.
John:
If we're not talking about it, I just wanted to give some – we're still getting feedback about it.
John:
That much is certain.
John:
We're not talking about it.
John:
Here, let's talk about it.
John:
Right.
John:
But we're still getting feedback about it.
John:
People continue to send us stuff, and I just wanted to give some representative samples for real live listeners covering the spectrum of the type of feedback we're getting.
John:
But I didn't practice pronouncing these people's names.
Casey:
Did I just hear a beer crack?
Casey:
You sure did.
Casey:
Marco, I love you so much.
Casey:
I've never loved you more than I love you right now.
Casey:
Sorry, what were you saying, John?
John:
I'm saying I didn't practice how to pronounce these people's names because I don't think I'd be doing it.
Casey:
You don't have to do it.
Casey:
We can skip this topic.
John:
No, we're totally doing it.
John:
Just skip it.
John:
We're going to go with Migrditch-Carnigian?
Marco:
No, that's definitely not it.
Marco:
I need more beers to open.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
I think that's it.
Marco:
I think that's close.
Marco:
You give it a try.
Marco:
So we have some follow-up about my task managers.
John:
Nope, nope.
John:
We're doing these.
John:
You just got to read them.
John:
That's all we have to do.
John:
It's not complicated.
John:
There's no discussion required.
John:
You just have to read the feedback.
Marco:
Oh, God.
Marco:
Why are we so talking about the battery stuff?
John:
I don't know.
John:
We're not talking about it.
John:
We're reading feedback.
John:
That's talking.
John:
Three items.
John:
There needs to be no discussion about it.
Casey:
Can we read in our minds and then not talk about it?
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Here we go.
Casey:
Here we go.
Casey:
I'm over it.
Casey:
I'm over it.
Casey:
Here we go.
Casey:
Here we go.
Casey:
We're going to speed run it.
Casey:
One person said... Done and done.
John:
The reason I picked these three things is because they're representative of the entire spectrum.
John:
One person saying my battery's great and I have terrible problems.
John:
One person saying that I had slowdowns and I fixed it with a clean install.
John:
One person saying I had slowdowns and I fixed it with a battery thing.
John:
I just want to put that out there because lots of people think that the various descriptions of things that might happen that we offer on the show are fictional or hypothetical or
John:
completely one-sided every possibility is encountered for by people that's what we're trying to express in these shows you think you know exactly how everybody is handling it's always throttling it's never throttling cleanest all always fixes it cleanest all never fixes it battery always fixes it battery net it's not true we're getting real accounts of all these different occurrences so this is actually a complicated nuanced issue and i'm sorry for all the people who think it is 100 whatever their pet theory is
Marco:
I hereby declare this topic done.
Casey:
Seriously?
Casey:
Permanently done.
Casey:
I understand why you brought it up, John, but I'm with Marco on this.
Casey:
We're done.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
I was talking, and I guess it made it in the show.
Casey:
I never listened to the show after it's released.
Casey:
I was talking under the influence of a beverage or two about my photo management Swift console app.
Casey:
And one of the things I'd said is that I wanted to verify that if I find a name collision, whether or not those two files are the same file.
Casey:
And the reason I made some of the choices I made is because this app was written just for me.
Casey:
And in my particular scenario, all of the final versions of the files are stored on my Synology, on my network attached storage.
Casey:
And so what I was saying was, hey, I want to MD5 all these files to make sure they're identical or not, make decisions based on that.
Casey:
And more than a few people wrote in to say...
Casey:
usually very very nicely you friggin idiot the first thing you do is check the size of the files and then you worry about md5ing them uh which was really annoying because i should have thought of that myself and didn't so i didn't mention it because i assume you were doing that so yes you should feel shame
John:
i feel deep shame and i am admitting it publicly honestly i'm with you casey i would not have thought of that like yeah just check the file sizes only md5 with the file sizes match i probably wouldn't have thought of that no you totally would have done it when you're writing the code you feel it you're like wait a second why don't you like all right god i feel it's impossible i feel it's impossible to write that code and actually have your fingers type it without going wait a second
Casey:
Well, I can tell you it is not impossible because I did it.
Casey:
But no, all kidding aside, it was a truly it was an obvious answer that I just really did not think of.
Casey:
So I appreciate all of you writing in and I am I have felt and continue to feel the appropriate amounts of shame.
Casey:
Now, the final follow up topic.
Casey:
Everyone and their mother also wrote in to tell Marco that they have the one true task management advice or app or what have you.
Casey:
Marco, did you try any of them?
Casey:
And do you care?
Marco:
I tried, I think, three or four different grocery list apps.
Marco:
We had lots of recommendations for these.
Marco:
I didn't try anything to replace things as my main to-do app because I've tried enough of those already.
Marco:
And honestly, trying to-do apps, giving them a real shot, is so time-consuming and cumbersome that I don't want to try a million of them.
Marco:
I'm very happy with things now.
Marco:
It's fine.
Marco:
So for the grocery list role...
Marco:
I mentioned that I use Clear, and I've been using Clear for years, and it's been fine, but I would like something that has Siri integration so I can quickly add to my list.
Marco:
So a bunch of people wrote in and suggested a lot of different apps that make grocery lists and do things in a smart way.
Marco:
I found all of them to be either hideous looking and or too complicated.
Marco:
Some of them tried to be too smart.
Marco:
A lot of them, you know, I mentioned that one of the reasons I like using Clear is it makes it very easy for me to just drag and reorder things to be in the order in which they are in the store because I know my stores really well.
Marco:
And so, you know, I always arrange things to be in an efficient way.
Marco:
Many apps try to do that for you automatically through some kind of either by learning the way you order them or by defining sections like, okay, produce and then cereals and then dairy.
Marco:
And you can even – some of them are even advanced enough to know that you can set like, okay, this store, the aisles are in this order.
Marco:
First produce, then dairy.
Marco:
Like it's a very – these apps have a very, very –
Marco:
advanced and complicated solution to this problem, and I found none of them compelling enough.
Marco:
I have already food shopped with, I think, two or three of them, and I found them not compelling.
Marco:
Either it was cumbersome to use, or it took a lot of space on screen, or they were very cluttered.
Marco:
I didn't like the way any of them actually flowed in use.
Marco:
Ultimately, this is a situation where you can make custom apps that try to be smart about grocery shopping.
Marco:
That's too much for me.
Marco:
I'm fine with clear.
Marco:
All I want is Siri entry and maybe sharing for clear.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
A basic list that I can drag to reorder myself.
Marco:
I, I, you know, all the intelligence stuff, it was, it's kind of like my nest thermostats.
Marco:
Like when I first got the nest back forever ago now, um,
Marco:
I very soon afterwards turned off all of their automatic learning features.
Marco:
And instead I just set a program on the website.
Marco:
Like you can just enter like, all right, go to this temperature at this time, go to this temperature at this time, and stop guessing what to do.
Marco:
I found that I greatly preferred that because the intelligent part of it would often just guess wrong or just get in my way.
Marco:
There's a lot of places where this is the case in a lot of different things for a lot of different people.
Marco:
This is just one of those problem domains, this grocery list thing, where for me, the simpler option is not only good enough, but better on average.
Marco:
For all of the gains that I got for the ones that would rearrange themselves intelligently, there were just as many times where it guessed wrong.
Marco:
And maybe if I use them for longer periods of time, they would learn better and they would get better.
Marco:
You know, whichever one I use most would like really learn me and my stores.
Marco:
But I found the process so cumbersome to use them and so uncompelling.
Marco:
I don't want to use them for any longer.
Marco:
I like I'm fine just using a very simple list app now, which so far is clear.
Marco:
And I hope the next version is clear, which I hear is being worked on.
Marco:
I hope it adds stuff like sharing and Siri.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
They recently took block storage out of beta, which is available in the Fremont and Newark data centers with plans to expand to all data centers by the end of the second quarter of this year.
Marco:
There's all sorts of new stuff happening at Linode.
Marco:
They're also currently in beta.
Marco:
They're testing a whole new control panel at cloud.linode.com.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
And again, they're always making that better.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
Check it out today, linode.com slash ATP, and use coupon code ATP2018 for a $20 credit.
Marco:
Once again, linode.com slash ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Linode for sponsoring our show.
Awesome.
Casey:
Today, there has been all sorts of drama about how you hold the HomePod incorrectly or something like that.
Marco:
Well, your shelf or table holds the HomePod incorrectly.
Marco:
Well done.
Marco:
All this time, who knew that we were supposed to be using coasters under our HomePods?
Marco:
Obviously, we are at fault here.
Marco:
We should have known that.
Casey:
Yeah, who knew?
Casey:
So basically, when people place their new HomePods, which actually, quick aside, did either of you get a HomePod yet?
Casey:
Because I have not.
Marco:
So I'll tell you what.
Casey:
Oh, here we go.
Casey:
Here we go.
Casey:
What else did you do in the city today on Valentine's Day?
John:
Sometimes the UPS man just comes to Marco's house and has things.
John:
We don't know how it happens.
Casey:
Here it is.
John:
Is there a connection with Marco's actions?
John:
Not conclusive.
Casey:
What'd you do, Marco?
Marco:
I don't have a HomePod.
Marco:
I will say that.
Marco:
But I did think if I wanted to try it out, there is a... I was under the impression, under the conclusion so far, that there really was no place in my house that I could really use one.
Marco:
And that actually is not correct.
Marco:
Next to the Echo, I have a Sonos Play 1.
Marco:
Not the new Sonos 1 that has the built-in Alexa integration.
Marco:
Not that.
Marco:
But the old Sonos Play 1 that is just the speaker, just the Sonos speaker.
Marco:
And I have it there because when, you know, like two years ago now, I started trying out Sonos to build an overcast integration.
Marco:
And they were kind enough to send me some units to test with and everything.
Marco:
And so I have a few of those in the house.
Marco:
And I needed a place to put it.
Marco:
So I put it next to the Echo.
Marco:
I hardly ever use the Sonos stuff.
Marco:
And when I do, I hardly ever play things out of that output.
Marco:
Usually it's out of the living room output.
Marco:
So I have a, you know, short, squat, white speaker that is better for music than assistant type things already sitting next to my Echo.
Marco:
So I could just remove the Sonos Play 1 and put a HomePod there.
Marco:
And then I can continue using the pair of them the way I have been using the pair of them so far, which is I use the Amazon Echo for kitchen timers and that kind of personal assistant stuff that the HomePod is maybe not so great at.
Marco:
And especially timers.
Marco:
Come on.
Marco:
Why is that...
Marco:
Come on.
Marco:
And then I could theoretically then use the HomePod for music there.
Marco:
I haven't done this yet, but if I wanted to try one out, and eventually, you know, I hope so much that this summer at WBDC, we hear of new SiriKit intents that involve audio playback services.
Marco:
I really, really hope for that.
Marco:
Honestly, my hopes are not that high.
Marco:
Or rather, my confidence is not that high.
Marco:
I don't think we're going to actually get that.
Marco:
I really hope I'm wrong, though.
Marco:
I really hope we do.
Marco:
If we do, then Overcast has something to do on the HomePod.
Marco:
And so I will have to get one for testing.
Marco:
And so that will be a sensible place to put it.
Marco:
But until that happens, and unless that happens, I'm still not that compelled to try it.
Marco:
But if I did put a HomePod there, that is actually a finished MDF wood piece.
Marco:
So I don't think I would create a ring.
Marco:
And if I did create a ring, it's already white.
Marco:
So it wouldn't really be visible.
Casey:
So to back up, the issue that's at hand is that people are starting to notice that when you sit your HomePod on some kinds of wood or maybe treated wood, maybe untreated wood, to be honest, it doesn't really matter in the grand scheme of things.
Casey:
But if you sit your HomePod on wood, it will more likely than not leave a ring from the base of the HomePod on the wood.
Casey:
So I don't see how there's really a lot of argument or discussion about this.
Casey:
Like, this seems like it's bogus and it's a poor design.
Casey:
And a lot of people are saying, no, no, no, no, no, no.
Casey:
You should put this on a coaster or a doily or something like that.
John:
But who's saying that?
John:
Who says that?
Marco:
Oh, you'd be surprised, John.
John:
I'm lucky.
John:
I must be doing a good job of curating my Twitter followers because I have not seen a single person say that.
Marco:
I got to say, there's a lot of people out there who feel like it's their job to explain Apple to everyone.
Marco:
And sometimes this is a wonderful service.
Marco:
And sometimes it's just people...
Marco:
basically being Apple's PR department for them.
Marco:
And I don't think that's healthy for anybody.
Marco:
That's not healthy for Apple.
Marco:
It's not healthy for people trying to make like, you know, a writing or blogging or analysis career.
Marco:
And it's not healthy.
Marco:
It isn't healthy for the audience.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
In fact, and I wanted to give a shout-out here.
Marco:
There's a podcast called The Menu Bar that was, I think, reintroduced, restarted a few weeks ago.
Marco:
Spoiler, I'm going to be the guest on it next week, and so this is partially self-promotional.
Marco:
But I suggest you listen to The Menu Bar.
Marco:
It is a very, very good angle of...
Marco:
Apple critique, and not just Apple, it actually is critique of the entire tech industry.
Marco:
There's a really fresh take of Apple critique on the menu bar that I think is worth hearing.
Marco:
Because it isn't just like, oh, the keyboard sucks, oh, the HomePod, blah.
Marco:
It's not that.
Marco:
It's not the kind of stuff.
Marco:
If you're tired of me criticizing Apple...
Marco:
It's not that.
Marco:
Like the way I do it, like they do it in a much better way and a much more interesting and constructive and thoughtful way.
Marco:
So I strongly suggest checking out the Menu Bar podcast.
Marco:
I'll put a link in the show notes and I'll have it appear here in the chapter art.
Marco:
Basically, the reason that I brought that up is that one of the things they said in a couple of the episodes now is that they don't feel like they need to basically like –
Marco:
be Apple's PR department for them.
Marco:
Anytime Apple does anything wrong, fans and sometimes writers, and mostly, honestly, just fans, a certain subset just thinks it's their job to jump out there and defend Apple in ways that Apple doesn't need to be defended.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
If the HomePod has this problem, which it certainly appears that it does, this is absolutely... It's a flaw.
Marco:
It's simple as that.
Marco:
It's not going to end the world.
Marco:
It's not going to make the HomePod a flop.
Marco:
It's not going to cause some kind of massive recall or anything.
Marco:
It's an embarrassing flaw.
Marco:
We heard for months that the HomePod hardware has been done for a long time, and they were just waiting on the software.
Marco:
The hardware's done.
Marco:
It's awesome.
Marco:
It's perfect.
Marco:
And then there's a hardware problem.
Marco:
There's an actual hardware flaw that shipped and not a small one.
Marco:
It just seems like it's just yet another thing about this product launch that's just sloppy and rushed.
Marco:
And apparently the hardware wasn't done well enough.
Marco:
Or they found this problem and decided it wouldn't matter and shipped it anyway.
Marco:
Kind of like when they knew that the MacBook keyboards were bad from the first MacBook but decided to bring them across the whole lineup anyway.
Marco:
Somewhere, things are falling apart in weird ways.
Marco:
flaws are getting shipped that should not get shipped that is cause for concern even if this particular flaw you don't think is that bad or doesn't affect you we are seeing a lot of embarrassing flaws that get out the door and it seems like either this product was not tested to the degree that we heard that it was and the hardware was not done as recently or as far back as we heard it was
Marco:
Or if any of the employees who had these take-home units that we heard about, that they were all over campus or all over people's houses, certainly somebody must have had this issue and must have reported it.
Marco:
And so either they didn't do enough testing or they found this issue and decided not only was it not worth addressing by changing the foot of the HomePod, changing the material or adding some kind of pad or something, not only was it not worth addressing in the hardware,
Marco:
But it wasn't even worth mentioning anywhere in the manuals and anything.
Marco:
Something's wrong there.
Marco:
Mistakes are getting out that should not get out.
Marco:
That, I think, ultimately, big picture, not just the HomePod ring of death or whatever, that is the more concerning thing to me about Apple right now.
Marco:
And that when these flaws come out, one of the main reactions from people both inside and out is defensiveness.
Marco:
Not actually going back and getting these problems fixed.
John:
One interesting theory I heard is that it's not actually a design problem but a manufacturing problem and that some manufacturers are responsible for making that smushy little ring cheaped out in a way they thought wouldn't be apparent.
John:
But it ends up being apparent.
John:
And it could be that all the Apple people who got the take home things got the good, properly manufactured rings on the bottom.
John:
So they didn't have this problem.
John:
But then the mass production ones, like, you know, some supplier cheaped out.
John:
I mean, not that that's also that's obviously also Apple's responsibility, but I can think of all sorts of ways how this can get out.
John:
You know, not because Apple didn't test it thoroughly or didn't pay attention to it, but simply because it's something that appears for the first time in the mass-produced models the customers get, which would be a bummer, but it's plausible.
John:
But Apple makes a lot of products that sit on tables and desks.
John:
Why hasn't that happened before?
John:
I know.
John:
This makes me think, like, do you think, I think, I mean, obviously for the HomePod, we expect them to test this, right?
John:
That's what we're getting at.
John:
It's like, you know this thing is going to be sitting on people's furniture all over the place.
John:
Like, it's the whole point of this device, right?
John:
But I think when I saw this, I think about, do you think Apple tests whether the feet on a MyMac Pro markup furniture?
John:
I'm going to guess they don't.
John:
Because there's not much expectation that the Mac Pro, my cheese grater, is going to be all over the house on all sorts of different kinds of furniture.
John:
It's basically going to be on desks or underneath desks.
John:
Do you think they test with a little rubber feet on the bottom of IMAX markup things that they're put on?
John:
I'm also going to guess that they don't.
John:
Not that they don't test on all materials, but that they basically don't test it at all.
John:
Because...
John:
i don't know it just doesn't seem like because it's not a product like the home pod where they show it literally on like here we're gonna put it on your you know end table or on your whatever right so that's why i think it is it's much more relevant to the home pod but it does make me realize that this blind spot and and you know probably extends to a lot of their products like for everything from from the plastic that they make their cords out of to all the different feet on probably the feet on laptops they do test in the same way that they that you would expect them to taste the home pod but
John:
I bet they don't test it on Macs, right?
John:
I mean, even if you have a wooden desk, like, I don't know.
John:
Maybe someone should write in and tell us, do you have a Mac that sits on a wooden desk and has marred the surface in some way?
John:
I think it's plausible because I honestly don't see them testing Macs on a bunch of different desk services, whereas they 100% should have and perhaps did test the HomePod on all sorts of different services.
Casey:
It's just weird.
Casey:
And here again, I think it's an instance of – arguably an instance of a little bit better communication up front might have maybe not solved the problem but helped the problem.
Casey:
Now, I still think it's bogus.
Casey:
I still think it's bogus that if you sit this thing on wood without putting something in between it, that it could screw up the wood.
Casey:
Like that's messed up, full stop.
Casey:
But it certainly would have been nice.
Casey:
And somebody else made – and I don't remember who it was, but I saw it.
Casey:
Well, yeah, and maybe it was him that said, oh, you know, we knew that the jet black iPhones were going to scratch.
Casey:
We knew it up front.
Casey:
We were OK with it because we knew what we were getting.
Casey:
What's the line from it was it was Batman Dark Knight where they say, you know, if you something along the lines of Joker says, you know, if you expect something, people are totally fine.
Casey:
It's when something unexpected happens that they lose their minds.
Casey:
And so you can expect that your brand new, you know, eight hundred dollar iPhone is going to scratch to Kingdom Come.
Casey:
And that's cool because we knew it was going to happen.
Casey:
But, you know, you don't expect this ring to show up and everyone loses their minds.
Casey:
And I would, too.
Casey:
I'd be upset.
John:
I don't think it's entirely about expectations, though.
John:
Like, I understand the communication angle, but I think the comparison to the phone just highlights how different this is.
John:
Right.
John:
So whether people are aware of it or not.
John:
The trade-off that Apple's making with the phone that scratches more, and Apple does advertise this but doesn't connect it up as much, is that they made softer glass in the hopes that it will shatter less often.
John:
So that's a trade-off that they're making.
John:
They're like, you can make the glass really, really hard, but then it's more likely to shatter.
John:
If you make it softer, it's more likely to scratch.
John:
that that's a trade-off that they have made because they advertise about how much more durable and less likely to shatter the iphone 10 and they also tell you it will scratch more and they don't connect the two of them for you but i'm pretty sure they're connected right so all right that's you know and they warn you up front that's a communication right
John:
For the ring thing, even if they had warned me, I'd be like, oh, thanks for telling me I shouldn't buy this because there is no tradeoff.
John:
Is the sound better because it makes rings on my furniture?
John:
I don't think it is.
John:
I don't think there's any connection.
John:
Is it made of a magic material that makes it better than a non-marking rubber?
John:
I don't think it is.
John:
There is no tradeoff.
John:
It's just plain simple something bad about it.
John:
and you could say if they had warned i would say it's great that i know us know this while i wait for my defective unit to be replaced for free apple thanks for warning me but i'm not going to take it as oh they warned me and so now i think it's okay it's 100 not okay because as far as i can tell there is no trade-off it's not a design decision it is a mistake and it is a mistake
John:
that can cause cosmetic damage to things in your house and that i feel like is unacceptable i don't think apple will recall these because of it but honestly i kind of think they should if they really want to have a reputation as a company that stands behind its products basically they should say we're not going to recall all of them but if your home pod marks up your furniture send it back to us and we'll send you a new one with a foot that doesn't mark it up that's the right thing to do as far as apple's concerned or as far as i'm concerned for apple to do
Marco:
Or they just give everybody like a doily or a coaster to put it on a fine Corinthian leather coaster.
John:
No, they don't.
John:
They need to not have things that I mean, it's not a glass of it's not a glass of ice water.
John:
It's going to sweat and leave a ring like if there's no water.
John:
It's just it's a it's an electronic device.
John:
It shouldn't leave rings on wood furniture.
John:
I'm sorry.
Marco:
I'm guessing we get no actual response from them on this, but who knows?
Casey:
Well, no, we did get a response because they put in a new thing.
Marco:
It was typical defensiveness.
Marco:
The response was you're holding it wrong.
John:
Cleaning and taking care of your HomePod.
Marco:
Yeah, the response was you should refinish your table.
John:
Where to place your home.
John:
It's not unusual for any speaker with vibration damning silicone base to leave mild marks when placed on it.
John:
You think it's not unusual?
John:
I don't know.
John:
It seems pretty unusual to me.
John:
I have to think there is a vibration damping material that you can put on the bottom of a speaker that does not mark wood surfaces.
John:
To put it this way, lots of speakers use the really, really pointy feet, which would leave actual holes in your things.
John:
But at least that's obvious when you see the really, really pointy feet.
John:
It just doesn't seem to me that that material is so special that there is no replacement that would impair the speaker's sound quality if they used a different kind of rubber.
John:
I don't see that.
Marco:
And honestly, I think the PR response to this is poor.
Casey:
Well, in their defense, as we record, there's been like an afternoon and evening worth of time for there to have a response because this just broke earlier today.
Casey:
Did it not?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
Okay, so, I mean, let's give them a little slack.
Casey:
There may be some sort of response coming.
John:
Yeah, no, we don't know what their reaction is going to be.
John:
I'm just saying that their reaction thus far seems insufficient to me.
John:
And, again, it's not like they need to recall them all like defective airbags in cars or something.
John:
If someone has it and it's sitting on, you know, a piece of furniture that it doesn't mark.
John:
There's no reason to recall that person's thing or whatever.
John:
But if someone has one of these and it leaves a marker on their furniture, they should be able to say, Apple, take this back and give me my money back or which they can do if they're inside the return window or Apple, take this back and give me one that doesn't leave a ring.
John:
And Apple should do that.
John:
I'm not even going so far as to say, oh, Apple has to pay for the damages to your furniture, which would also be nice, but is a little bit unfeasible in terms of logistics.
John:
uh but no it's a they it's a mistake i'm i'm you know it's probably an honest mistake i can imagine how this slipped through but it's not acceptable there is no this is not a design trade-off like uh phone screens that scratch a little bit easier in exchange for not shattering as much
Marco:
Did you have any thoughts on the teardowns?
Marco:
Those were done between last episode and this one, so we didn't get a chance to talk about it a lot.
Marco:
I looked at a little bit.
Marco:
I don't think anyone was surprised by what was in there, right?
Marco:
It's very interesting to me to see a lot of the way that it's structured and built.
Marco:
I think one of the weird surprises for me is how none of the speakers fire outwards.
Marco:
Like the woofer fires up and the tweeters fire down.
Marco:
Like the whole middle of it, you know, it's covered in cloth.
Marco:
So you kind of get the feeling that it's like one big speaker.
Marco:
But in fact, the speakers are firing out of the top and bottom out of the little vents.
Marco:
And there's nothing firing out the sides.
Marco:
The sides are just solid.
Casey:
I thought we had seen some sort of indication during WWDC of what this looked like inside, at least approximately.
Casey:
So I'm not too terribly surprised by that.
Casey:
But to be honest, I did not get a chance to look at the teardown, so I don't really know what I'm talking about.
Marco:
Oh, also, while we're on the subject of teardowns,
Marco:
Got to also give massive shout-out to the season finale of this season of Welcome to Macintosh, the podcast by Mark Bramhill.
Marco:
It was an interview with the founder of iFixit, who does these wonderful teardowns, about repairability and long-term recyclability of our devices.
Marco:
It was really good, and it really makes you think about things like e-waste and the way these products are being...
Marco:
built and manufactured and designed and how, you know, there are ways you can design something for repairability and then later recyclability.
Marco:
And there are ways that you can make that harder or impossible.
Marco:
And, you know, Apple seems very split on this issue.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
There's obviously parts of Apple that care deeply about the environment and about recyclability of things, but a lot of their hardware designs are very hard or impossible to recycle some pretty major parts.
Marco:
They don't necessarily need to be done that way.
Marco:
So I think it's a very good episode, worth a listen, and certainly thought-provoking.
Thank you.
Marco:
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Casey:
Any other HomePod thoughts?
Casey:
John, how do you like yours?
John:
I was actually thinking of getting one because I thought I had a line to get one at a steep discount.
John:
Because like I said, I have a place to put it.
John:
And I'm like, oh, I want to hear how it sounds.
John:
But I have not been able to secure one for less than retail price, for significantly less than retail price.
John:
And so I'm still back to, well, I'm not paying $350 for it.
Yeah.
Marco:
I'm still holding out.
Marco:
One thing also, we've had a lot more impressions and reviews and real-world tests and impressions that have come out.
Marco:
The opinion on the sound quality is starting to get a little bit split.
Marco:
Most people still think it sounds amazing, but there are some people who have heard them and come out of it saying, I actually don't like the sound.
Marco:
And I think it's interesting.
Marco:
Most of the complaints tend to be either the processing is doing something weird with the mid-range that doesn't agree with their music or their tastes, or
Marco:
Or a common complaint is the bass is just too prominent.
Marco:
And it's hard with the HomePod because it does room calibration and because it is listening to the bass response and dynamically adjusting it and things like that.
Marco:
And because it does so much processing on the audio to try to separate the components out into different positions in the room and everything.
Marco:
Because it's so complex like that,
Marco:
It's really hard to get an idea of what it sounds like because it could sound like lots of different things.
Marco:
Whether the sound works for you can be highly dependent on what the HomePod has calibrated to for your room and also how it's processing things like centering part of the midrange that thinks it's vocals and then putting parts of instruments in the background that thinks those are instruments and whether that works for certain songs or not.
Marco:
it's going to be a really hard thing to get a handle on, like whether it works for you or not, without actually just trying one, because it's going to vary so much.
Marco:
And even like trying to test it, like there was that Reddit post where like the guy, you know, did allegedly a controlled test, although it wasn't that controlled.
Marco:
And, and, you know,
Marco:
measuring its frequency response and distortion and things like that.
Marco:
But that's really hard to test on the HomePod because it's doing so much processing to the sound, you really can't get a good handle on what it will always output because there is no one frequency response or one distortion rate that it will always output because it's doing things to the input sounds based on various intelligence and heuristics and stuff.
Marco:
So it's really hard to get a solid idea on whether it's for you without just listening to it and without trying your music in your house, in the room that you want to put it in to see for yourself.
Marco:
But I do think that not having any tone controls...
Marco:
is probably a mistake, because the Echo doesn't have any tone controls, as far as I know, but the Echo sounds like garbage, so it doesn't really matter.
Marco:
No one's seeking good sound quality out of that, and Amazon's not selling it as good sound quality.
Marco:
Sonos has tone controls, I think.
Marco:
Google, who knows, who cares.
Marco:
But because Apple is positioning this as a really good speaker, and also because they're doing so much non-standard processing of the audio,
Marco:
I think they need to offer some kind of basic tone control, even as simple as like, how much bass do you want?
Marco:
Like that, I think might need to be a control because a lot of people have reported that not agreeing with them.
Marco:
But it's because it's really hard to design a speaker that appeals to everybody.
Marco:
It's even harder when you're doing very heavy and non-standard things to the audio, not just replaying it out of transducer.
John:
That sounds like a feature.
John:
I mean, we talked about this before about how, you know, you have the hardware.
John:
It's just a question of adding software updates to it.
John:
That sounds like a feature that could come fairly soon in a software update.
John:
Like you said, even just for bass response.
John:
I'm not even saying they're going to throw, like, give you...
Marco:
an equalizer because almost every other audio thing that apple sells whether it's i think iphones have it in the music app don't they well certainly itunes does has an equalizer it's in the settings app yeah it but it's only for music played in the music app it doesn't apply system wide and also it isn't a real equalizer they don't they only have presets it's like the same like 10 or 15 presets like rock and pop and random yeah
Marco:
The same ones that iPods had like 10 years ago, they have not changed.
Marco:
And there's no actual equalizer for you to just... If you want to get in there and define your own thing, you can't.
Marco:
If you want to adjust certain frequencies for certain things, you can't.
Marco:
I get the feeling most people just probably don't use it.
John:
Yeah, but anyway, iTunes has a full equalizer.
John:
But then the HomePod, like you said, it doesn't need an equalizer.
John:
It doesn't need presets.
John:
It just needs...
John:
one slider for bass and that's it yeah like and that would that would go a long way towards making it uh appeal to a much wider range of people and and and i would say that that slider should go up as well as down because some people want more bass than the home pod puts out right i mean that's why you know beats headphones are so popular right uh
John:
beyond that i think there's not because of all the dynamic adjustability stuff there's probably not that much more control that you can give people because it's like what are they even controlling uh are they controlling the final output or are they controlling like the input before the home pod decides how it's going to interpret that like are they controlling the signal before it goes into the home pods processing or are they just like
John:
The bass is easy.
John:
You can just lower the output to the one big speaker that you know most of the bass frequencies are sent to.
John:
But for everything else, I think it gets a little bit tricky.
John:
Agreed.
John:
Anyway, that feels like a no-brainer update to me for a software update that will...
John:
that will widen the appeal of this device for the for the uh what you're talking about the uh the testing they had that blind test that uh pogue did oh yeah that was pretty good too well here's the thing here's the thing about this test like you you mentioned i think you're talking about this on twitter um
John:
How subjective sound is.
John:
Oh, yeah.
John:
Some people like lots of bass.
John:
Some people like not as much.
John:
Some people have certain reactions to certain songs that sound a certain way.
John:
And it's very subjective.
John:
And then doing any kind of audio sort of blind testing, even though David Polk said he...
John:
well he said i figured what his wording was but he basically said i tried to volume match them by ear like because that's a very important about the thing about sound testing so one thing we know if you make one speaker slightly louder everyone picks it as the best no matter how bad it sounds like people are very sensitive to volume right so it's important for all the speakers to be the same volume
John:
But the way you get them all the same volume is probably not listening to them all and saying, yeah, I feel like they're about the same volume.
John:
And furthermore, how do you even adjust the volume on a thing that is dynamically changing how it outputs sound based on what it detects about the room?
John:
Like, how do you even adjust the HomePod volume?
John:
It's very difficult to do.
John:
And then finally, how many people did he test it?
John:
I put it in front of four people.
John:
I guess you get an article out of that.
John:
Did you put it in front of 400 people?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Even if you did, all you'd be doing is getting a survey of what people think of the HomePod.
John:
That's why I feel like the frequency response things, at least it gives you a baseline.
John:
It doesn't mean that, you know, frequency response is like, here's ideal and here's what it sounds like.
John:
It doesn't mean you're going to like how it sounds, but at least it's something that you can measure.
John:
So if you know that you like speakers that are dead on for the expected frequency response, you will like the HomePod if it's close to that.
John:
And if you don't like speakers that are like that, you won't like the HomePod.
John:
So let someone...
John:
read something and especially with an audio file probably know am i going to like the sound of the speaker because we've done some objective measurements on the speaker and then you can decide do you like speakers that have measurements like this or do you not like them and again only audio files would know that
John:
For everybody else, it's just kind of a crapshoot.
John:
You buy it, you put it in your house where you're going to put it, you listen to it, and you either like it or you don't.
John:
And if most people are comparing it to the Echo, I can't imagine anyone not liking it because, as you said, the Echo sounds terrible because that's not what it's supposed to do.
John:
But for comparing it to Sonos and other things that are high quality, I'm not sure.
John:
Like, if someone was asking me for advice, should I get a Sonos or a HomePod, which sounds better?
John:
I don't think there's any answer I can give them that is the truth.
John:
It's like, they're both good speakers.
John:
I think you'll have to hear each of them in the environment where it's going to be and then return the one you don't like, which is an answer nobody wants to hear.
John:
But that's just the nature of sound, I think.
Marco:
Oh, absolutely.
Marco:
I mean, this is what I was ranting about on Twitter.
Marco:
Like...
Marco:
First of all, nobody can really agree on what is, like, a good frequency response.
Marco:
Like, a lot of people think, oh, you want it to be flat.
Marco:
You don't.
Marco:
And people can't agree on what the curve should be.
Marco:
There's a couple of, like, you know, widely known standards.
Marco:
Like, there's, like, a Harman-Kardon one that a lot of – or, like, a Harman curve that a lot of manufacturers use or set as their goal –
Marco:
But I find the Harmon Curve fairly boring because it really is weak on the treble side.
Marco:
And I like some treble strength.
Marco:
And I find it a little bit withdraws the vocals.
Marco:
I like some vocals.
Marco:
And so everyone has different tastes.
Marco:
I am...
Marco:
an audiophile who used to compare products online by looking at their frequency response graphs.
Marco:
Like, I made so many headphone purchases or avoided so many headphones because I looked at their frequency response graph and thought, you know what, either, oh, that looks like something I would like, or that looks like another Harman Kerva headphone, and I probably wouldn't like that.
Marco:
But I have found that frequency response graphs...
Marco:
can almost never really provide useful input for whether something will sound appealing to you when you actually have it.
Marco:
And that's just with headphones.
Marco:
Headphones are super easy to test and their output is very reproducible because you don't really have the room to worry about.
Marco:
Speakers are a nightmare of inconsistency because they depend so much on the room and the placement of the speakers and where you are sitting relative to the speakers.
Marco:
that it's almost impossible to have any idea how a speaker will sound unless you actually put it in the room it's going in and just try it, which is really inconvenient with speakers because they can be quite large and quite heavy, and a lot of times you just have to buy blind and just hope it works out.
Marco:
Fortunately, this kind of speaker is much smaller and much easier to buy and return if it doesn't work out.
Marco:
But all this is to say that...
Marco:
You can't look at any measurements or read any reviews or, for God's sake, watch any videos.
Marco:
A video is completely useless for letting you hear how a speaker will sound.
Marco:
I don't know why people keep doing this because going through a different microphone and then whatever your speakers are, it's totally garbage.
Marco:
The only way to really know how it will sound and whether you will like it is to get it in your house and just try it.
Marco:
And the HomePod, you know, it seems like people do generally like it, so it seems like, you know, your chances are good this will probably work out for you if you're interested.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
None of these tests are particularly useful, and no frequency response graph or measurements really are very useful for this product for so many reasons, not least of which is the massive processing it does, but also just these graphs aren't useful most of the time anyway for any product.
John:
And to be fair, I think the first round of reviews struck the right balance, because mostly the things you want to know that anyone can tell is, like, how loud does it get without distorting?
John:
Because we've all had small speakers that strain to be heard when you're far away, and if you crank the volume up to max, they just start distorting heavily.
John:
I don't think you need instruments to measure that.
John:
You can kind of see, like...
John:
Your iPhone, for example.
John:
Your iPhone at max volume is not going to fill a room with sound.
John:
You don't need any instruments to measure that.
John:
You can tell.
John:
And is it faithfully reproducing the sound?
John:
Or at max volume, is it somewhat distorted and certain frequencies?
John:
You don't need to be an audio file to kind of tell, no, it's not...
John:
that's not really what this song sounds like.
John:
And at max volume, it's not particularly loud, right?
John:
So, I mean, obviously that's an extreme, right?
John:
But anyone, all the homepage reviews said, this gets surprisingly loud.
John:
And even at high volumes, it doesn't start fuzzing out and sounding terrible.
John:
And overall, the sound quality is pretty good.
John:
And that, I think, is the right balance to strike for this type of review.
John:
Because if you start saying things beyond that, like direct comparison with the Sonos Play 5 or Play 1 or anything like that, it's just too subjective to say anything definitive about until you start getting out the instruments.
John:
And then once you get out the instruments, the HomePod defies you because you stick an instrument close to it and it thinks it's next to a wall or something.
John:
And
John:
changes the sound in a weird way and you have no idea what's going on that was the question with the sheet they put in front of like to be a blind test was the home pod detecting that the sheet was there even though it's supposed to be acoustically transparent as i think it's a wall and it's trying to bounce sound off it and doing something weird who knows we have no visibility into the black box that is the black cylinder that is the home pod or space gray or white so anyway i'm still i'm still interested to try one in my house and see how it sounds but still not interested enough to plunk down 350 bucks
Casey:
That's exactly how I feel.
Casey:
And I would, I was really hoping that Mr. I, I, all I do is spend money would come through for us on this one, but I thought about it.
Casey:
You've let us down, John.
Casey:
He's getting there.
Casey:
Give him, give him a couple more weeks.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I mean, probably, but so like if I'm honest with myself, yeah, probably by next week's show.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
One more thing to consider, though, is this is a product that has shipped without some of its major features.
Marco:
It just didn't make it in time.
Marco:
Definitely, obviously, it lacks AirPlay 2.
Marco:
That's the big one.
Marco:
And that also means it lacks multi-speaker stereo pairing.
Marco:
It lacks multi-room.
Marco:
And also, Siri is greatly lacking in a lot of areas, some small, some pretty big.
Marco:
I have a feeling this product is going to grow slowly.
Marco:
I have a feeling that there's going to be a lot of people who are waiting for one of those things to get fixed.
Marco:
I would caution people, don't buy it today unless you are okay with the features and Siri that it has today.
Marco:
And this is not a statement about Apple.
Marco:
This is a statement about all tech products.
Marco:
Never buy tech products based on future software or service promises.
Marco:
Because so often they either don't deliver or they deliver really late or incomplete or just crappy.
Marco:
And so whatever the HomePod, like if you're on the fence about the HomePod, he's like, well, this one limitation of Siri, you know, but they'll fix it in a software update.
Marco:
Assume they won't.
Marco:
Assume they never will fix it.
Marco:
If you still want it, okay, it's safe to buy.
Marco:
But don't buy it based on the assumption of some future thing that they will change or improve or add until that thing is actually delivered.
Marco:
And that applies to all tech products.
Casey:
Yeah, how is your full autopilot working out on your car?
Marco:
I never bought full autopilot, and I would not recommend anybody buy Tesla's full autopilot until it's actually released and demonstrated.
Marco:
You can add it later for a small additional charge.
Casey:
No, we had this conversation privately a few days ago, and that's exactly why I brought it up.
Casey:
Yeah, I, as always, am waffling on the idea of a HomePod.
Casey:
In so many ways, I like the idea of having a really small but really, really good sounding, you know, ostensibly speaker.
Casey:
But I still am struggling to find an actual justification for $350.
Casey:
If this was $100, which I'm not saying it's overpriced necessarily.
Casey:
I'm just saying if it was $100, I think I would have bought it and just said, yeah, the hell with it.
Casey:
I'll give it a shot.
Casey:
But at $350, that for me anyway is something where I have to weigh the pros and cons.
Casey:
And it's just right now I'm with John.
Casey:
It's just not compelling enough for me to spend the money.
Casey:
So when I have one next week, you can all laugh at me and we'll play this clip back.
Marco:
So what color are you not getting next week?
Casey:
Oh, definitely not getting space gray.
Casey:
Definitely not.
Marco:
See, I would have to not get the white to live next to my Echo.
Casey:
So you would get white and I would get black.
Casey:
Funny how that is.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Eero.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
and Canada.
Marco:
We've tried for years to cover our entire houses in Wi-Fi without any dead zones or slow areas.
Marco:
And it's really hard because when you only have one router, there's always just inherently going to be dead zones because of things like walls and real life.
Marco:
With Eero, they solve this problem by having a distributed Wi-Fi system.
Marco:
There's multiple routers that you plug in throughout your house.
Marco:
and they share the connection, and you don't even have to hardwire them.
Marco:
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Marco:
This is an enterprise-grade system with enterprise-grade functionality and speed and reliability,
Marco:
but not enterprise-grade complexity.
Marco:
It is super easy to set up.
Marco:
The new Eero hardware is also incredibly nice.
Marco:
It just looks really nice.
Marco:
It's small.
Marco:
It's discreet.
Marco:
The base station is about the size of an Apple TV or so, and it's nice and white.
Marco:
And they now have the second-generation hardware.
Marco:
It's nice and fast.
Marco:
triple band radios and all sorts of wonderful new advanced technology.
Marco:
And then the kind of accessory satellite base stations, they now have these Eero beacons.
Marco:
This is also a new second generation piece of hardware, tri-band, twice as fast as its predecessor.
Marco:
And the beacon is this nice small, almost like plug in an outlet.
Marco:
It just sits flush against the outlet.
Marco:
And that is your little Wi-Fi repeater for different parts of your house.
Marco:
They're so small, you can put them in a hallway, you wouldn't even notice them.
Marco:
They're wonderful, and this blankets your house in fast, reliable coverage.
Marco:
It's the kind of system that businesses have used for years to cover their whole businesses, but that was always too complex for home users.
Marco:
Eero has made it super easy and super reliable, and quite affordable, if I may say.
Marco:
The single router system just doesn't work.
Marco:
You need a distributed system, and Eero is by far the easiest one I've ever seen to set up.
Marco:
It's wonderful.
Marco:
So check it out today.
Marco:
Go to Eero.com and use promo code ATP at checkout, and you will get free overnight shipping to the U.S.
Marco:
or Canada.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Eero for sponsoring our show.
Marco:
I've been using Waze for a year, and I added it to the topic list a year ago because I wanted to spend five seconds saying, you know what?
Marco:
I use Waze, and it's awesome.
Marco:
And John's like, oh, I have a lot to say about that.
Marco:
That has to be a full topic.
Marco:
And so it was added to the topic list, and it's been floating on the topic list for a year while
Marco:
right at about spot number four and most shows we have three topics so it has never gotten into the main topic list and we've always been like one topic away from covering the ways topic and i have no idea what john wants to say about it what i want to say about it would you know take maybe five minutes um but well let's let's have you do an opening statement then let's test that five minute idea everyone look at everyone look at the time stamp right now and go
Marco:
So, I have used a lot of GPS systems, either in cars or as apps on computers first, laptops and then phones.
Marco:
Many of them try to be smart about routing you around traffic.
Marco:
Or even just the basic routing, you know, tries to be smart in some degree.
Marco:
But many of them try to be smart, like, when there's traffic, if they have some kind of internet connectivity for traffic service, like, they detect traffic and they try to route you around or they offer you, like, alternative, like, hey...
Marco:
You can go over here and save 10 minutes, and it takes you off some weirdo, like, crazy path through residential areas or off a cliff or whatever.
Marco:
Those, I have found, have almost no credibility whatsoever.
Marco:
Almost every time, one of the traffic routing apps...
Marco:
has suggested a route to me to save time.
Marco:
It almost never does save time, and it almost always makes me regret having done it because of some weird place it brings me through, whether it's really narrow roads or dirt roads or going through really bad neighborhoods or residential areas that it's just really weird to just keep going through a million stop signs in front of people's houses and stuff like that.
Marco:
I started going to Long Island a lot for the beach last summer.
Marco:
And I started using Waze a lot.
Marco:
Going to Long Island is always a traffic nightmare, especially when you go on the weekends when everyone else is going.
Marco:
And I have since been using Waze, so yeah, for about a year, and I've been using it since then also.
Marco:
And Waze...
Marco:
is so much better than every other traffic routing system I have ever used by a long shot to the point where it has earned my trust.
Marco:
When Waze tells me to go a certain way, I go that way.
Marco:
It has not steered me wrong yet.
Marco:
It is so good.
Marco:
And I know that there's – I know, first of all, it's owned by Google.
Marco:
And it is constantly sending lots of data to them and really burns your battery so you've got to have it plugged in.
Marco:
I'm aware of the tradeoffs here for privacy and creepiness for this service.
Marco:
But it so dramatically is better than everything else out there in so many ways.
Marco:
It has earned my trust, and I highly suggest if anyone else is okay with giving a whole bunch of your location data to Google while you're using Waze, I strongly suggest using it when you drive somewhere.
Marco:
And there's lots of other things about it that a lot of people first heard about it because of its feature where people can report where police officers are, and it'll alert you, hey, there's a police officer up ahead, 0.5 miles ahead or whatever.
Marco:
Honestly, that's a side benefit.
Marco:
The traffic routing is really where it's at.
Marco:
That is where...
Marco:
Waze kicks so much butt across everything else, and it's also incredibly good at time estimates.
Marco:
Like, I can go on a two-hour drive with lots of traffic in the middle, and whatever time estimate Waze told me at the beginning of the drive of when I would arrive...
Marco:
On a two-hour traffic-filled drive, it's right within like five minutes almost every time.
Marco:
It's crazy how accurate the time estimates are.
Marco:
So unlike a lot of the other systems I've used, you don't sit there and watch the timer count up, which is really discouraging.
Marco:
You know ahead of time roughly what you're getting into.
Marco:
And you can even plan drives.
Marco:
You can say, like, I'm going to be driving from here to here tomorrow morning.
Marco:
What time should I leave?
Marco:
And you can scroll through this cool graph where it'll show you, like, well, if you leave an hour earlier, it'll take less time.
Marco:
And if you go near this time zone, it'll get really traffic-y, but then it'll lessen out down here after rush hour, like...
Marco:
It's so nice that it is one of the very few things that I'm very willing to give up a massive amount of my privacy and my data for the incredible benefit that it gives.
Marco:
So, John, why am I wrong about everything?
Casey:
By the way, that was roughly four minutes.
Casey:
Well done.
John:
Yes.
John:
I would love to see what those graphs look like if you're in the Hamptons and it's Sunday night.
John:
It should be like, just go to sleep.
John:
Try them Monday morning.
John:
Because it would be like, if I leave now, I'll get home in seven hours.
John:
But if I leave five hours from now, I'll get home in one and a half hours.
Hmm.
John:
so this Waze has been a topic for so long I have no idea what I think I was going to say about it but I do have something well one fairly silly but possibly depressing thing to say about it I have Waze on my phone at various times during drives or before I knew it was going to take a drive I'm like we should use Waze
John:
because there might be traffic and i'm interested in alternate routes i've tried to use ways by launching the application and it has sent me into like a sign up funnel that i have never made it through and
John:
I don't remember now what it is that was sending me away, but I think at least three or four times I was motivated to use Waze.
John:
I started down whatever funnel of sign-up thing it had for me.
John:
And partway through, I bailed out because it was too onerous.
John:
Did it want my social security number?
John:
Did it want... I mean, I'm not one of those people like, whatever, take my email, I'll make a password.
John:
I don't care, I'll make an account.
John:
It's not like I'm...
John:
you know, shy about making accounts, but there was something about the signup process.
John:
And this, I think it's like the first app that it's happened to.
John:
And it's memorable to me because I have been repeatedly motivated to try the app because people say it's good and yet it keeps repelling me.
John:
Um, so I have no idea.
John:
It's changed since the last time I've tried it.
John:
But whatever it is, I couldn't get through to the app to use the app because of this funnel that it was sending me through.
John:
And I find that kind of depressing.
John:
My question for Marco is what are the competitors?
John:
Like you mentioned Waze compared to others.
John:
What other things have you tried?
John:
Because honestly, I don't even know.
John:
I know Apple Maps.
John:
I know Google Maps.
John:
And I know Waze.
John:
And that's it.
John:
Yeah, so those three, those are probably the big ones.
Marco:
I've also used the built-in systems for Tesla.
Marco:
The Tesla system is garbage.
Marco:
It has Google Map tiles, which is nice, so you can see the good maps.
Marco:
But through probably some weird licensing thing, it doesn't use Google for the directions.
Marco:
Tesla, I think, has their own service or licensing something else for the routing.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Um, and so like the Google tiles are literally just there, like as the image of the map.
Marco:
And so Tesla has its own system for routing that has options for, for dynamic traffic routing.
Marco:
And it is horrible.
Marco:
I don't recommend anybody use it for that.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
like to the point where i had this giant touch screen in my car which i love all other times and we'll often use like to browse around the map to see like you know what areas around me are full of traffic right now if i'm like going somewhere local i want to see like how how it should get there the giant tesla map is awesome for that but then i'll have my phone in this little like seven dollar suction cup mount right next to the tesla screen running ways when i'm actually going somewhere like on the highway
Marco:
Because it's so much better.
Marco:
So yeah, the Tesla system is terrible.
Marco:
I've also tried the Lexus system and two or three generations of the BMW iDrive system.
Marco:
None of them are very good.
Marco:
The traffic routing on all of them is pretty poor.
Marco:
BMW system also has the additional benefit of being incomprehensible.
Marco:
When it's offering you traffic routing options, in this case, you've seen this.
Marco:
It can be pretty awkward to try to figure out what button here do I hit to take this route or decline this route, and then if you decline it, can you go back later and see it, or what is it going to do for you?
Marco:
It's very confusing and very hard to use.
Marco:
All the other systems have led me down crazy paths.
Marco:
And that didn't pay off and made terrible time estimates along the way and made terrible decisions along the way where Waze just hasn't like I think I've had maybe one or two times where Waze told me to do something and afterwards I thought maybe that wasn't worth it.
Marco:
But it's nothing like with the other systems where you take one of their traffic suggestions and every time you're like, oh God, Tesla does not know what speed traffic moves on side streets in New York City.
Marco:
That's crazy.
Marco:
It's that level of bad with the other systems.
Marco:
And Waze just, again, it has earned my trust.
Marco:
When Waze tells me to take some direction, even if I know that it's going to be indirect, I know they're telling me for a good reason.
Marco:
And so I take it and it works almost every time.
Marco:
It's shocking how good it is.
John:
You have the advantage that the New York metro area probably has incredibly good coverage for Waze information, right?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, there's a reason why if you get into any Lyft or Uber or even a lot of taxis and car services, the drivers of almost all of these services use Waze to route themselves.
Marco:
You can watch on their phones that they have mounted.
Marco:
A lot of times they'll have multiple phones, one of them running the Lyft driver app and one of them running...
Marco:
Waze.
Marco:
And even if they only have one phone, they'll be switching between those two apps.
Marco:
They'll be actually using Waze to route them there, and whatever map Uber or Lyft is telling them to take as the driver, they're mostly ignoring because Waze is better.
Marco:
So yeah, obviously, it is obviously a very data-dependent service.
Marco:
So if you're in an area where there's not a lot of users of it, it's not going to be as good at traffic routing.
Marco:
But...
Marco:
It's really popular and it's been really popular for a long time.
Marco:
And it's really popular among people who drive a lot like taxi drivers.
Marco:
So there tends to be a lot of Waze coverage pretty much everywhere in my experience.
John:
I've used the Google app and it has suggested to me alternate routes.
John:
I don't know if Google, I mean, Google, if they own Waze, I would think they would leverage some of that information, but I have no idea if the Google's, you know, so every once in a while I have taken the suggested alternate route from Google and so far hasn't still been wrong, but they haven't been radically different.
John:
It was like, take this major highway instead of this one because there's an accident.
John:
And I'm like, all right, good, thanks.
John:
But for the most part, I have not entered the world of, you know, you know,
John:
Letting go and letting Waze just tell me where to go.
Casey:
So I have not done any sort of scientific testing on this, but my completely anecdotal single data point based on my experience is that Google does use the same data that Waze does.
Casey:
But it seems to be a lot less aggressive about routing you through somebody's backyard, like Marco was talking about.
Casey:
Like it will keep you to only ever so slightly aggressive changes of route, whereas Waze will send you through a residential street and not even think twice about it.
Marco:
It also, it's kind of funny when you are doing that, there's almost always two cars ahead of you who are following the exact same route.
Marco:
And you can tell like, oh, this is the Waze cluster right here.
Marco:
All the Waze users are going through this random residential street.
Marco:
But then we pop onto the highway magically right in front of a giant traffic jam.
Marco:
It's like, okay, well, I guess that was worth it after all.
Casey:
Yeah, it's totally true.
Casey:
The one thing that really bothers me about Waze has almost nothing to do with Waze at all.
Casey:
And at the risk of sounding like a broken record, and what do I need for that?
Casey:
A vinyl player?
Casey:
Is that right?
Casey:
Anyway.
Marco:
A vinyl turner, I believe it's called.
Casey:
A vinyl turner.
Casey:
That's what it is.
Casey:
At the risk of sounding like a broken record, one of the things that really bums me out about Waze...
Casey:
Is that if I'm in Aaron's car and she has a 2017 XC90, a Volvo XC90 with CarPlay, if I'm in Aaron's car, and you must run into this in the BMW if you ever take that for any long journey.
Casey:
I don't.
Casey:
I know, I know.
Casey:
But you can't use Waze natively on CarPlay.
Casey:
I'm not clear, and it may be, but that's entirely Waze's fault.
Casey:
I don't think that's the case.
Marco:
It's not.
Marco:
The only way that other apps can integrate with CarPlay is as audio playing apps.
Marco:
That's it.
Marco:
There's no other APIs and no other integrations that they've done with partners or anything.
Marco:
It's only audio playback.
Casey:
There you go.
Casey:
So it is infuriating that here is a really, really lovely, perfectly, well, maybe not perfectly, but really well thought out secondary display for my phone that is right in the center console, right where you would want to look at it.
Casey:
And there is nothing that Waze can do about that and Waze can't use it at all.
Casey:
And it's super duper frustrating.
Casey:
One of the nice things about Aaron's car is that, you know, I will often plug in my phone to her car.
Casey:
And so we are looking at the CarPlay display of my phone on the center display because it's easy for me as a passenger to reroute her or choose a different route or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
And that would be amazing with Waze.
Casey:
And I would kill to be able to have Waze on Aaron's CarPlay display.
Casey:
But because Apple is the walliest of walled gardens, no dice.
Casey:
And this is the same problem I have with Spotify on the HomePod.
Casey:
And it is getting to the point that I am starting to get deeply frustrated about this.
Casey:
Deeply frustrated enough to go Android?
Casey:
Eh, let's not go crazy.
Casey:
But I am getting deeply frustrated by this.
Casey:
And I don't feel like Apple is really doing themselves any service, particularly in this context.
Casey:
I could see how, yeah, okay, fine.
Casey:
Let the HomePod drive Apple Music sales, fine, whatever.
Casey:
But I still disagree with it, but I can at least understand the perspective.
Casey:
But in this case, like...
Casey:
Why are you forcing people to use Apple Maps?
Casey:
And I actually don't have that much of a problem with Apple Maps, and I'll turn to that when I'm doing any sort of normal half an hour or an hour journey.
Casey:
But if I'm doing what you're talking about, Marco, going to the beach or doing a two-hour-plus journey, I'm all ways all the time.
Casey:
And especially if I'm going to D.C., which is a traffic nightmare, I'm going ways for that.
Casey:
And so it is infuriating.
Casey:
That because of hubris, because of obnoxiousness, I don't know what adjective you want to want to use here, but for whatever reason, laziness, Apple just does not let us use the one app that I think almost everyone universally wants to use.
John:
I think I understand why CarPlay is so limited.
John:
I think they're just very nervous about putting arbitrary third-party iOS users or interfaces up on a screen, even just for display purposes, that they just want to be conservative and say, these are the things that we've decided are...
John:
Yeah.
John:
And there's also like, you know, it's a difficult problem because...
Marco:
there are so many different laws in different countries and even different states about what a car screen can display and how much can it change, how many items can be in a list of items because they don't want people browsing long lists while they're driving.
Marco:
There's so many regulations and stuff that it's... And again, when you're dealing with auto safety, you really have to be very conservative because literally lives are at stake if you're not...
Marco:
And so there's lots of regulations and safety concerns there.
Marco:
So it makes sense why they don't add much to it.
Marco:
But the reality then is what people do is what I've done with my car is like you just get a cell phone mount for $7 and you stick it to the car and then you have your phone screen available to you.
Marco:
Maybe that's an acceptable compromise because then like, you know, they're they're like legally covered.
Marco:
He's like, well, we didn't do that.
Marco:
You know, I wonder if that's necessarily the best idea.
Marco:
But ultimately, it doesn't really matter whether it's a good idea or not.
Marco:
That's what everyone's doing.
Marco:
And across all walks of life, Android and iOS, like that's what everyone does is they want to use Waze in their car, which a lot of people do.
Marco:
They just get a cell phone mount and stick it to the dashboard or the windshield.
Marco:
And it's not the best setup in the world, but it's fine.
John:
It'll be increasingly wasteful as large screens in cars trickles down from the high end to basically every car, which is slowly but surely happening.
John:
Because, you know, right now you feel a frustration.
John:
I got a 17 inch LCD in my Tesla and I got to look at my little phone screen because I can't display Waze on my giant Tesla screen.
John:
Right.
John:
And the same thing with all of the high end cars that have displays in front of the driver and in the instrument cluster and everything like that.
John:
Fast forward 10-15 years where every single car you buy has like two or three giant screens in them and still people are clipping things to ventilation ports so they can look at their tiny phone screen and have all the wires dangling all over the place.
John:
That's bad.
John:
That's not good.
John:
I'm not quite sure what the solution is because I don't think you should just let arbitrary phones display whatever they want on the screens in the car, but that may be inevitable.
John:
The only comparison I can think of is one that is not a particularly good comparison, which is radar detectors, which there are all sorts of laws against as well.
John:
but I don't think we ever got to the point where any car manufacturer was brave enough to build them into the car.
John:
Right.
John:
So everyone who wants to have a radar detector or a laser detector or whatever, in the days before we had ways to tell us where the cops are.
John:
Um,
John:
would have a device with a suction cup and a cable snaking down along their car, and it never changed from that.
John:
Like, even cars with radar, you know, well, I don't know if they have the sensors built in for that, but, you know, self-driving cars that have all sorts of sensors all over them, I don't think any of those sensors are dedicated to finding laser or radar speed detection, or could even be hacked to do so.
John:
And, you know, the current solution is internet and crowdsourcing.
John:
That's how we find out, but...
John:
I'm hoping the screen issue resolves itself in a better way because unlike speed trap detection stuff, I think it is possible to have a constructive, useful, non-law-breaking application of better directions inside our cars because most cars have some way to do directions and a map and all the other stuff we just want.
John:
we just want an environment where we can choose the best map for whatever area we live in and not have to like the home pod or all sorts of other device not have to pick the hardware based on what software runs on it yeah because and you know first of all like i think this is different than the radar detector example in in the largest way because it's so much more mass market than radar detectors ever were or will be um like
Marco:
so many more people use cell phone mounts in their cars than ever use radar detectors, you know?
Marco:
And because that was always such a kind of, you know, edge case for like high strung men basically.
Marco:
Um, and, and, and so like, you know, but this is like, this is so mass market, like people like Apple or Tesla who are like, you know, designing things for cars where that, that don't accommodate the fact that everyone's going to just use cell phone mounts unless they make a better solution to put any app on a screen.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
I feel like that fight has already passed them.
Marco:
The market has already decided we want arbitrary apps to be able to be displayed on our phones and our cars.
Marco:
And that's terrible because it's very unsafe.
Marco:
You don't want people showing a texting app or something.
Marco:
Or watching YouTube videos or whatever.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
There's lots of reasons why that's terrible.
Marco:
But the reality is people are doing it and people will continue to do it because for very compelling and totally legitimate and safe uses like Waze or other navigation apps, that's such a compelling use that people are just going to do it anyway.
Marco:
So they might as well... The more pragmatic solution here is not to try to stop people from doing that or try to lock people into just...
Marco:
your built-in thing in whatever gated system you run, but to acknowledge the fact that people are doing this and will do this and try to give them a better, safer way to do what they're going to do anyway.
John:
The Tesla Model 3, my recollection of the interior is correct, actually throws a monkey wrench into it and it doesn't have vents in the traditional sense where you can clip in your holder.
John:
So you'd have to use like a windshield suction cup.
John:
And in that case, I don't know how far away the windshield is.
Marco:
Yeah, I don't know if that would work.
Marco:
So I started out with a vent clip and moved to a suction cup with like a little like, you know, two inch arm or four inch arm.
Marco:
And for just it's because the suction cup thing or the vent thing just kept falling out as my phone got bigger and heavier.
Marco:
And as I accelerated harder sometimes, it would just fall right off.
Marco:
But it works for me because there's like a flat piece of trim right below the vent.
Marco:
So I just have it suction cupped like vertically to that.
Marco:
But I'm kind of worried that whenever the next Model S revision comes out, which is probably, I think, going to be in time for my next lease, I'm a little worried they might change the interior to be more like the 3 and not give me a spot to stick a suction cup.
John:
Well, then you'll have to do it on the windshield on an even longer arm because the windshield is really far away.
John:
And I really don't want to do that.
John:
I really don't want to do that.
Marco:
It puts it too high up for me.
John:
That's why it reminded me of radar detectors, even though, like you said, it's way more common.
John:
But it's the ugliness of messing up your car's interior with this extra wart that you have to stick onto it, plus the associated cord that's attached to the wart.
Marco:
Well, that's why I resisted it for so long, like, why I just wanted to use the built-in systems for so long, and then why my first thing was just the little, you know, vent mount, because that was something I could just keep in the little, like, center console, and just, like, when I wanted to use it, take it out, take out a lightning cable, and, you know, stick it on there and use it, and then when I was done, I would take it away, and it took, you know, three or four months of that before I was like, all right,
Marco:
I'm sold on this setup.
Marco:
I'm in.
Marco:
Let me do it right and make it less annoying and less finicky.
Marco:
And now I just have a permanent suction cup stuck right next to my giant tuck screen of my beautiful car interior with this permanent or semi-permanent wire running down the side because it just has that much utility.
Marco:
It's so good and so helpful that...
Marco:
that's what like that i'm willing to tarnish my interior with this seven dollar plastic garbage that's sitting next to my beautiful screen because it is just that useful to me one thing that could make this slightly less clumsy and i've always been a proponent of this the idea of uh
John:
rededicating old devices to specific uses.
John:
The tricky part with directions is like, yeah, but who's going to pay for a phone that only lives in their car forever, right?
John:
But some fancy schmancy cars come with their own cell connections that, granted, you have to pay for, but...
John:
you know if you're paying for an internet connection for like an lte connection for your car then you could reuse an old iphone with no sim in it merely going on the car's wi-fi and permanently mount it or an old ipad for that matter and permanently mount it somewhere in your car uh and have it be a single purpose device the only thing this thing does is ever is runs the waze application and it's permanently plugged in and i can route the wire like you're basically designing your own car interior and
John:
I have a dedicated iPod touch in my car for music purposes.
John:
I can Bluetooth play music from my phone as well, but it's nice to have a dedicated thing that's always in the car, always connected, always plugged in.
John:
I could see people doing that with directions if it was possible to get it to work.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I honestly considered using a cellular iPad mini for this purpose because I feel like that's kind of like a really good balance.
Marco:
Like it doesn't cost much to have the cell plan on that.
Marco:
It's a pretty good size screen, bigger than any phone.
Marco:
So like if you like if there was a place for that to fit in my interior without blocking a third of the screen, I might have done that.
John:
We've got a Model 3 because there's nothing on that dashboard.
John:
Plenty of room for nothing.
John:
So gross.
Casey:
Anyway, it's funny you bring that up, John, because as we were talking, I was thinking to myself, you know, Aaron's car does have an LTE connection that we're not paying for.
Casey:
And you can, like, cough near a cell phone store and get a free Android phone.
Casey:
I could get a free Android phone, install only Waze on it, turn everything else off, install it in Aaron's car, and just have that be our car computer.
Casey:
Because it supports Android Auto as well.
Casey:
And I am almost sure, even regardless of the fact that Google now owns Waze, I don't think they have near as many restrictions, as far as I'm aware, on Android Auto as Apple does.
Casey:
And thus, why couldn't I just get the world's crappiest Android phone?
Casey:
I guess that's kind of redundant, isn't it?
Casey:
Anyway...
John:
this is a good test of casey's uh sense of injustice about uh cell phone plans all right so the watch which is very small was a great affront because it charged you however much it charged you but the car is very very big so how much does a cell connection for your car cost and do you feel it is okay
Casey:
I think it's the same or it's double one or the other.
Casey:
And this is why we haven't paid for itself.
Casey:
Like we got our free six gigs or whatever it was when we bought the car.
Casey:
And I've never paid for it since because I also don't think that's worth the money either.
John:
But the car is so big.
Casey:
Oh, my God.
Casey:
I'm not going to entertain this conversation.
Casey:
I'm not sure.
John:
It's 100 percent true.
Casey:
No, it's not true because I'm not paying for it.
Marco:
How many watches could fit in the mass of the car?
John:
What I'm saying is, like, I firmly believe that it seems more unjust because the watch is small than it would for a larger device.
Casey:
Oh, I'm not debating that.
Casey:
I completely agree with that.
John:
And so the car is the largest device.
Marco:
How often would you use the car Waze LTE connection versus how often do you use the watch's LTE connection?
Marco:
Are you actually using the LTE still?
Casey:
Yeah, two to three times a week.
Casey:
Well, not for the last two months because I just had a kid and it's been freezing out.
Casey:
But yes, anytime I go for a run, I go with only AirPods and my watch.
Casey:
And so every time I do that, well, I guess I shouldn't say I am using the LTE connection, but I want to have the ability to.
Casey:
Does that make sense?
Casey:
So like if I break an ankle or something, I want to be able to call Aaron and say, please come get me.
Marco:
I would count that as using it.
Marco:
If you're going out without your phone being connected via LTE, that counts as using it.
Casey:
And this is why I'm paying for it.
Casey:
I'm grumbling about it.
Casey:
I grumbled about it.
Casey:
I didn't bring it up this time, thank you very much.
Casey:
But I did my grumbling.
Casey:
I moved on with my life.
Casey:
This is why I do pay for the watch.
Casey:
And we didn't pay for the car and haven't paid for the LTE connection in the car, that is.
Casey:
because i did the math if just in a in a figurative sense i did the math not even literally arithmetic and i thought you know what it's very rare that i'm in the car long enough to justify using its connection even if i am i can just tether there's really no need for me to pay for a connection in the car would it be more convenient if it was free absolutely is it worth and i think it's either 10 or 20 bucks a month i can't remember which
Casey:
Is it worth that money for it?
Casey:
No, probably not.
Casey:
But I only brought it up to say it is a solution one could do.
Casey:
Even if you're a devout iOS person, you could get a free Android phone, stick Waze on it, hook it up to either tethering on your existing iPhone or just hook it up to your car or what have you.
Casey:
Use Android Auto and everyone's happy.
Casey:
I don't recommend it, but you could.
Marco:
You know what?
Marco:
I'm totally fine having a $7 piece of plastic stuck to my dashboard semi-permanently, but I don't think I would ever put an Android phone there.
John:
Could you even tell that it's an Android phone because doesn't the Waze interface look the same?
John:
I would know.
Casey:
additionally it's clear that neither of you have ever owned a radar detector or installed one properly because on my 300zx my valentine one was hardwired into the car you could see wires absolutely nowhere you like tuck it like under the trim and stuff like that right yeah yeah yep and also i had a remote display on the steering column so the bog the actual radar detector itself okay so you could see like a couple inches of wire going from the radar detector into the headliner
Casey:
But the display for the radar detector was mounted on the steering column.
Casey:
It was a secondary display that you could buy.
Casey:
And so this way, nothing lit up in the windshield area.
Casey:
It looked like another part of the dash from afar.
Casey:
I actually saved myself from a ticket in Virginia where these are, well, I hypothetically saved myself from a ticket in Virginia where these may or may not be legal.
Casey:
But I haven't used my radar detector in years because it's just not worth it anymore.
Casey:
And I don't drive that quick.
John:
I think part of the utility of not having it hardwired and having the little coiled up, you know, phone cord wire snaking across your thing is so you can hastily disconnect it and chuck it into your glove box when you get pulled over.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
Casey:
Stephen McLenning writes, and this is continuing in our car theme, are advanced safety features found in cars comparable across manufacturers.
Casey:
Features that use technology like lean departure warning, forward collision warning, and blind spot detection are offered in BMWs and Hondys.
Casey:
or Hyundai's, or however you're supposed to pronounce it, are they equally as effective, or are they much better and more expensive cars?
Casey:
How can one compare?
Casey:
I don't know the answer to this question, and I think it would be a really fascinating test, if only I knew someone who did car videos from time to time.
Casey:
But anyway, I think it's a really interesting question, but I have to imagine that they're...
Casey:
I think anything that doesn't involve automated driving, that's a whole different can of worms.
Casey:
But if you're not talking about automated driving, you're just talking about panic stopping on behalf of the driver or something like that, nudging the driver back into the lane if they're starting to drift, I would assume and imagine that they're not that different between both luxury and economy marquees.
Casey:
Would you guys agree with that?
Casey:
Let's start with Marco.
Marco.
Marco:
I mean, John will tell us the real answer here.
Marco:
I don't actually know.
Marco:
From what I think, I think these sensors and systems tend to be sold to multiple car manufacturers.
Marco:
That's what I thought, too.
Marco:
There's a small number of companies that make these kinds of systems, and then they sell them to BMW and Mercedes and Audi.
Marco:
They sell the same thing to multiple people.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
I'm sure some people have their own stuff or have exclusives deals on some of the things, but some of the features probably are literally identical because they're literally using the same modules and same software.
Marco:
And some of the stuff, like you mentioned, like lane departure warning, blind spot detection...
Marco:
that actually doesn't seem that hard to do.
Marco:
Like the blind spot detection where it just kind of like lights up the little warning light on your side view mirror when somebody's in your blind spot, like that I don't think is very complicated.
Marco:
That seems pretty reliable and pretty easy to do these days.
Marco:
So like stuff like that, I wouldn't expect a lot of variation between manufacturers.
Marco:
Some of the harder things like automatic emergency braking, like if you're about to hit a wall and it tries to stop, that kind of thing I would expect to vary a little more.
Marco:
Obviously, as Casey said, anything that tries to steer for you, like Tesla's autopilot thing, I would expect that to vary a lot more because it's just a more complex problem.
Marco:
So, John, what's the real answer?
John:
I don't know why you're asking me, because in the same way that... Do you read car magazines?
John:
In the same way that I have never owned a car that doesn't have three pedals, unlike everyone else on this podcast, I've never owned a car with any of these features.
John:
Lane departure, forward collision, blind spot detection, I have never had a car with any of those features.
John:
So I have no idea how they work.
John:
And honestly, I've been, in the same way with the stick shift, I have been intentionally avoiding those features, because as far as I've been able to tell from reading things about them and being in other people's cars that have them...
John:
uh they can be super annoying uh if they can't be turned off and if i'm turning them off then why the hell am i paying extra to get them so i such a john answer so i'm i've thus far avoided getting them it's not to say that i think they're bad um i think they are good especially the things that like you know will break automatically for you if you're not paying attention and stuff like that um but i mean and the only ones that have even been offered on cars that i've got are the ones that just use like
John:
lane departure right and uh you know i have the pretensioning seat belts and stuff i have like things that you know pull the seat belt tighter when you're in an accident but that's not quite the same thing as these active systems as for what my impression of how they might be on on uh fancy cars versus regular cars as with all car technology they come out first on the expensive cars
John:
And so the first time you're going to see like lane departure, whatever that was, however many decades ago, was probably on like a BMW or Mercedes or some fancy car, right?
John:
It was surely an S-Class.
John:
Yeah.
John:
And those features, when they first come out, are not that great.
John:
Like the very first anti-lock brakes, which was also probably on a Mercedes or something like that, those anti-lock brakes were not that great.
John:
By the time anti-lock brakes comes down to the Honda Civic,
John:
It has been refined many, many times over.
John:
And at the point that you get down to the bottom of the ranks of cars, anti-lock brakes are more or less the same from a Mercedes S-Class all the way down to a Honda Civic because it becomes commoditized.
John:
That doesn't really answer the question for these things because I think they are not yet commoditized, especially, as Marco pointed out, things that steer the car for you.
John:
Not even close to commoditized, but I would say right now they're bad on the expensive cars and non-existent on the cheap cars.
John:
So...
John:
For features like that, if you run out and get the expensive car just to get the feature, you're probably getting the worst version of that feature that is ever going to exist.
John:
Whereas if you ignore that feature for a couple of decades, by the time it trickles down to your $15,000 car, it'll be about the same across the entire line.
John:
Across the entire auto industry, that is.
John:
self-driving is so much more complicated that i'm not sure if that applies to but things like lane departure and anti-lock brakes and front collision warnings and even like auto following uh uh what do you call cruise control yeah radar cruise right that i feel like you know is filtering down pretty well now and maybe it's not entirely the same across the lines maybe it's a little bit harsher on the bottom ones but it's way better than the very first radar cruise control that came out you know in the 80s or whatever on cadillac or whoever did it first
Casey:
I will say that on Erin's car, she has pretty much all of these features.
Casey:
And the lane departure or lane control or whatever is tremendous.
Casey:
I love it.
Casey:
It will just gently nudge you back in the lane if you start to drift a little bit or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
And it works really well.
Casey:
I really, really like it a lot.
Casey:
The panic stop, what is it called?
Casey:
I forget.
Casey:
The forward collision warning.
Casey:
That definitely does have some false alarms from time to time.
Casey:
Now, the good news is it's a false alarm that's where it tries for just a flash to stop when it doesn't need to.
Casey:
And I'd rather that than it, you know, just assume, oh, I'm sure it's great.
Casey:
And then we plow into a wall, you know, but nevertheless, it does occasionally go and it, you know, kind of just it like instantaneously stands on the brakes for you and then immediately lets go.
Casey:
Oh, wow.
Casey:
Boy, is that startling.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
Is that startling?
Marco:
Yeah, that would scare the crap out of me.
Marco:
Like I have I have like the audible alerts and my car offers automatic emergency braking, but I've never had it engaged.
Casey:
I mean, all in all, I do think it is good and worth it because, God forbid, I'm not paying attention and something happens.
Casey:
But there are definitely some false alarms on it, and that's kind of frustrating.
Casey:
And that actually reminds me that on the Grand Cherokee that I briefly borrowed before I got the Giulia,
Casey:
I noticed that every time I was at a stoplight, I think I might have talked about this on the show, I was at a two-lane stoplight.
Casey:
So say I'm making a left and I was adjacent to somebody, I would start to make the left and it would go berserk because I thought I was having a collision with the person next to me.
Casey:
And that was really annoying.
Casey:
But that's the only instance I can think of where I've seen dramatically different behavior on safety stuff between different manufacturers.
Casey:
But as we've all said, I think self-driving is a totally different conversation than
Casey:
That has not yet really been standardized.
Casey:
The next one is mostly from Marco.
Casey:
This is Jeff Cooney writing.
Casey:
What is the deal with Leica cameras?
Casey:
I've always loved their industrial design, particularly the M models.
Casey:
But upon doing some research, it seems like their features and specs are no better than other cameras from leading companies like Canon or Sony that cost thousands of dollars less.
Casey:
What am I missing about these cameras that commands this exorbitant premium?
Casey:
I don't know anything about Leica cameras other than that they look pretty and that they're super duper expensive.
Casey:
So I'm actually kind of curious as well.
Casey:
Marco, what's the story here?
Marco:
Leica's been around for a very long time, and they have some really impressive engineering, and they have built up a really strong reputation for a very long time among high-end, usually more artsy or hobbyist photographers, not necessarily pros, because they don't quite make gear that would satisfy most pro needs.
Marco:
If you're a wedding photographer or something, you're probably not using a Leica for lots of reasons.
Marco:
But they are very, very expensive.
Marco:
And some of that you are just paying for the brand.
Marco:
But they do have a lot of good qualities that make them compelling to certain people.
Marco:
Some of it is just like if you have a lot of money and you want a really cool camera, you've got to like it.
Marco:
I've heard them called dentist cameras.
Marco:
Ha ha ha.
Marco:
Wow.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And I should clarify, I have very little experience with them.
Marco:
I rented an M9 for Christmas a few years ago.
Marco:
I actually made a big blog post with some simple pictures about it.
Marco:
And I found what a lot of people find, I think, with them is that...
Marco:
The raw specs of it were not very competitive, especially for the price.
Marco:
Things like the sensor, like the noise performance and the resolution on the sensor was nowhere near competitive with good sensors of the same time frame.
Marco:
Things like the burst rate and features.
Marco:
I don't think any of them offer video, or at least they didn't for a long time.
Marco:
It seems like you're paying a really high price for not top-of-the-line technology within them.
Marco:
But what really impressed me about Leica back then and what still impresses me today about them is two major areas.
Marco:
Number one, the optics in their lenses are just incredible.
Marco:
Now, when I rented the M9 and wrote this post back in Christmas of 2012...
Marco:
The Sony FE series was not really quite there yet.
Marco:
I think it either wasn't out or it was just the very first models.
Marco:
And Canon had not updated a lot of their lenses the way they have recently.
Marco:
And so back then in 2012, the Leica M lenses were some of the best lenses you could get in the industry.
Marco:
And what blew me away with my rental of it...
Marco:
was the sheer optical quality that this basic, small lens provided.
Marco:
It was a 35mm F2 Prime something, Summicron something, I don't know.
Marco:
And it was like a $3,000 lens.
Marco:
This is why I rented it.
Marco:
But still, the optical quality blew me away.
Marco:
Now, today, we have a lot more options that also provide really good optical quality.
Marco:
Basically, in the last five years or so, there's been a huge revolution in lens design, especially coming out of Sony and then later on coming out of Canon.
Marco:
And unfortunately, Nikon people... I haven't been following Nikon that closely.
Marco:
I apologize again.
Marco:
But clearly, the massive upgrade in lens quality and resolution especially...
Marco:
coming out of Sony and Canon over the last few years has been astronomical.
Marco:
And so, like, now I feel like you can get similar optical quality, if not even maybe better optical quality, out of lenses from other manufacturers.
Marco:
But back then, you couldn't.
Marco:
So that was one thing that blew me away, that still, like, I'm looking at this blog post I made, like, still, to this day, it's still...
Marco:
really really good optics and really good pictures coming out of this the second thing that leica has going for it a lot of the times is that the way a camera interprets the data coming off of its sensors is not all the same between different camera manufacturers every manufacturer and oftentimes even between different models have different ways of interpreting the the raw sensor data and
Marco:
And then they have different ways to apply things like color tone and color balance and contrast and sharpening and things like that.
Marco:
What you get off the raw sensor is not anywhere close to the final picture with any camera.
Marco:
iPhone all the way up to Leica and whatever.
Marco:
like a processing of the photos is just really appealing to me and a lot of people like the way it renders colors the way it renders contrast and things like it just makes really nice pictures without a lot of effort without having to do a lot of post-processing on them or without having to like manually tweak a lot of the colors and color balance and everything else
Marco:
Again, this is another one of those areas where a lot of it's just personal preference.
Marco:
Tiff does not like the way my Sony cameras render colors.
Marco:
She can't get the color balance she wants out of my Sonys.
Marco:
I can't get the color balance I want out of Canon's.
Marco:
It's a personal preference.
Marco:
And Leica has its own color balancing that it does that...
Marco:
to me is just incredibly appealing.
Marco:
And that's been one of the only things that's ever really tempted me to give that another try maybe and maybe even buy one is just like the color rendering is just incredible on them and the way it renders tones and everything.
Marco:
It's just really nice.
Marco:
So there's areas about photography that aren't just about the specs.
Marco:
And it's hard for, especially as I was getting into this hobby and as I've developed over time in this hobby, it's been hard for me to
Marco:
learn that and and to feel that that like to me it was so much all about specs for so long but now i'm realizing like there's more to it than that and so the appeal of like a in part it is yes like you know like a rich dentist slash hipster thing because they're cool but it's there's reasons that you would buy it that aren't just because it's cool like it actually backs that up with
Marco:
really nice photo processing, really nice tones and colors and everything, and just stunningly good optics in most of their lenses.
Marco:
So that being said, there's also a couple other... They have so many different models now, it's hard to keep track.
Marco:
So everything I just said was based on my experience with the M9.
Marco:
That's been updated lots since then.
Marco:
There's other full-frame rangefinder models.
Marco:
They have a couple of mirrorless ones.
Marco:
I don't know if they have interchangeable lens yet.
Marco:
It's hard to keep track, honestly, because they actually do a fair number of models these days.
Marco:
They have some that only shoot in black and white.
Marco:
And I actually got to play with that one, the black and white only one.
Marco:
It was some kind of mirrorless thing.
Marco:
So it was basically a direct competitor to the Sony RX1.
Marco:
What blew me away about it was, compared to, at the time, my a7R II that I had...
Marco:
it was way more responsive.
Marco:
The viewfinder, it was like the difference between 15 frames per second and 60 frames per second.
Marco:
The viewfinder was like looking through a piece of glass, even though it was electronic looking through the sensor.
Marco:
It was just such a high refresh rate, such a high frame rate.
Marco:
It was just precise, fast.
Marco:
You could snap pictures, just boom, boom, boom, boom, boom.
Marco:
It would not slow down.
Marco:
It just handled really well.
Marco:
It was very satisfying to use.
Marco:
And again, the tones that I saw out of that, granted, this was like literally playing with a friend's camera at a conference for five minutes, so I didn't get a lot of use out of it.
Marco:
But it was very compelling.
Marco:
And if at the time I had a need for a fixed lens camera that you couldn't change lenses on where I actually wanted that particular lens,
Marco:
I would have seriously considered that.
Marco:
So yet more qualities that cameras can have that are not about specs and that are hard to get in reviews.
Marco:
Or the review might mention it, but you might zoom past it because you think it's BS or you don't think it's a spec or you don't care.
Marco:
but Leica has earned their reputation for good reasons.
Marco:
They might not line up with what you want in a camera, and it's up to you whether you think it's worth their quite high prices, but there are reasons for it.
Casey:
That's interesting.
Casey:
I'm surprised you don't have one.
Marco:
I mean, you don't know that I don't have one.
Marco:
No, I don't have one.
Casey:
We also need to call attention to this adorable picture of baby Adam in this post.
Casey:
My word.
Casey:
I know, isn't it cute?
Casey:
He's so little.
Marco:
Thanks for our sponsors this week.
Marco:
Away, Linode, and Eero.
Marco:
And we will talk to you next week.
Marco:
Now the show is over.
Marco:
They didn't even mean to begin.
Marco:
Because it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
Oh, it was accidental.
Marco:
Accidental.
Marco:
John didn't do any research.
Marco:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him.
Marco:
Cause 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.
Marco:
You can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-N-T, Marco Arment, S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A, Syracuse.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Marco:
It's accidental.
Casey:
They didn't mean to.
Casey:
Accidental.
Casey:
Accidental.
John:
Tech podcast so long.
John:
Do we have any more baby updates?
Casey:
It's mostly fun.
Casey:
Actually, the thing that's maybe not interesting, but the thing that we've been fighting with lately...
Casey:
is we moved Declan to a toddler bed or whatever you call it.
Casey:
So basically instead of being in a full-on crib, he's in a bed that he can easily climb out of and has been for a few months now.
Casey:
I forget exactly how long, but it's been a not insignificant amount of time.
Casey:
but over the last couple of weeks particularly this is this had started before michaela but it's been particularly egregious the last well few days most especially but egregious in general in the last few weeks he'll get out of his bed and tell us like come to our room or you know whatever the case may be and tell us i don't like sleep time or i'm hungry or i'm thirsty or my favorite sound like legitimate complaints how are you addressing this
Casey:
I'm hungry in a very, very gentle way.
Casey:
I'm obviously paraphrasing, but I'm hungry.
Casey:
Tough noogies.
Casey:
You should have eaten more before.
Casey:
We warned you about this before you came upstairs.
Casey:
You're not getting any more food.
Casey:
I'm thirsty is here's a little cup of water, drink it, and then you're done.
Casey:
And then eventually, actually, you've gotten to the point of leaving him a bottle of water in his room just to get away from the I'm thirsty complaints.
Casey:
You know, the answer is, well, you have a bottle of water in your room.
Casey:
Drink it.
Casey:
But my favorite is I don't like rest time, in which case it's like, well, how do you say to a three year old tough shit?
Casey:
This happens every night.
Casey:
Like, you know, there's no reasoning with them.
John:
They ever come in and say, I missed the love that this baby stole from me.
Casey:
No, not yet.
John:
Not yet.
John:
Dark.
John:
Because I feel like that's what he's saying.
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
Maybe it is.
Casey:
And I'm trying to stay cool about it.
Marco:
It couldn't be the universal kid thing of I don't want to go to sleep right now.
Casey:
Well, and that's what I've been attributing it to.
Casey:
Genuinely.
John:
Well, you know, he's describing this as a change in behavior.
John:
So I'm saying what's changed recently in Declan's life?
Casey:
Well, it's gotten worse since Michaela.
Casey:
I think you're both right, to be honest.
Casey:
And I think I personally come down more on Marco's side.
Casey:
But again, I think you're both right.
Casey:
It started before Michaela, but got worse in the last week or two.
Casey:
And my favorite is when he comes out of his room.
Casey:
Declan, why are you out of your room?
Casey:
I don't know.
Marco:
Adam does that too sometimes.
Marco:
You can tell, what do you need?
Marco:
You can tell the gears start turning at that point to come up with something.
Casey:
It's so true.
Marco:
One issue is he's still napping, right?
Casey:
uh well sort of so right he has he has quiet time in his room where he is allowed to like get out of bed and play quietly or whatever and i would say between a third and a half of the days he will actually sleep for that and the other two-thirds or half to two-thirds he's just sitting there playing in his room or in his bed
Marco:
So what we found, and what I think a couple of our friends have also found, so it seems to be a thing, is obviously when you're transitioning out of nap phase, you're getting to the point where most days he shouldn't be having a nap.
Marco:
And what we found is that when we were in that phase...
Marco:
the days that he would nap would be the days that he would just be impossible to keep in bed because he just wasn't tired enough.
Marco:
Like it, when you start thinking about that way, it's like, well, you're the best thing you can do is it sounds like you're probably at that phase.
Marco:
So just stop napping like me and, and do what you can to make it that he does not nap.
Marco:
Like,
Marco:
don't like take a long car drive right in the mid afternoon or anything like that like don't like trying to give him a chance to nap try to keep him from doing that by various activity planning or anything because then when bedtime rolls around he will be tired enough that he will just go to bed and and not give you as hard of a time about it because he'll just be so tired like that's what we found
John:
you have to think about moving his bedtime too because like i know like you have a routine you're like great we have a child and the child always goes to bed at x o'clock that is going to change and it's not going to change like on its own you have to consciously think oh he's not six months anymore now he's three should his bedtime be different right and repeat until they're five and ten and thirteen like you can't as much as i love would love to do i love the naps i love being able to put the kids to bed at 7 30 but that sadly does not last
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I mean, it's fine in the grand scheme of things.
Casey:
Things could be so much worse.
John:
Until they encroach on every waking hour of your actual life.
John:
It's like, wait a second.
John:
If by the time the kids are in bed, it's time for me to go to bed, when is my time?
John:
And you're like, that's right.
John:
It's gone.
John:
It's gone, isn't it?
John:
No naps.
John:
And they go to bed at the same time as you.
John:
I don't even want to know.
John:
So welcome to your future.