Voting With Your Virtual Feet
Casey:
We can't start for eight more minutes.
John:
Why?
John:
Is there some kind of sporting game on?
Casey:
No.
Casey:
I don't know if you can hear this.
Casey:
Hold on.
John:
Is that the rain or the wind?
Casey:
No, that's my IMAX screaming.
John:
It was raining here, and I was wondering if it was going to keep up.
Casey:
It was raining earlier.
Casey:
It's actually gorgeous now, but it was raining earlier.
Marco:
Actually, all this time, Casey's IMAX just doesn't work in the rain, and he just never thought to mention it.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
This year...
Casey:
This is the little plastic sheathing, if you will, for an ATP pin.
Casey:
I have to say, it looks magnificent.
Casey:
I am quite excited about these pins.
Casey:
I actually have not yet opened one.
Marco:
Oh, you should open it.
Marco:
Mine arrived today, and I opened one, and they are really nice.
Casey:
This is excellent work.
Casey:
It has a nice, soft, little, like, stabby thing cap.
Casey:
stabby thing is that a technical term for what another word for the thing that's on the back of what are they called again probably a post would be a guess a backing um yeah but anyway uh so the little thing that protects the post is very nice very soft it is it is quite nice this pin and uh you know i highly suggest listeners if you'd like to uh throw a few bucks our way you should pick one up and uh marco why don't you tell us about where you can get these pins among many other things which i will also talk about
Marco:
So you can go to atp.fm slash shirt for our usual URL, or you can go to our new URL, atp.fm slash store.
Marco:
And the reason why it's store is that this year we have zero new designs, but like five new products.
Casey:
So with that in mind, I now have...
Casey:
That's me hitting the brim of my baseball cap onto the microphone.
Casey:
This is an embroidered ATP.
Casey:
What is the official name for the grayish color?
Casey:
It's like charcoal coal something.
John:
Space gray.
Casey:
Space gray.
Casey:
It's definitely space gray.
Casey:
How could I be so wrong?
Casey:
Um, it is a space gray embroidered ATP hat.
Casey:
I am quite into it.
Casey:
It looks quite good.
Casey:
I also have with me and I am playing with it now, but it's not making very much noise and ATP embroidered zipped hoodie.
Casey:
Now I am quite excited about this.
Casey:
I don't really wear hoodies like the hood to me is kind of redundant, but I know a lot of people are useless.
Casey:
Maybe I know a lot of people that love the hood part of the hoodie.
Casey:
However, my word, the inside of this thing is made of magic.
Casey:
It is extremely soft.
Casey:
It is thin, but thick enough that it will provide warmth.
Casey:
You know, it's not one of those scenarios where it's like a piece of like, you know, tissue paper that you're wrapping yourself with.
Casey:
It's thick enough that it's got some heft to it, but it's still very light and casual.
Casey:
And I have to say this thing is quite nice.
Casey:
But perhaps more importantly than anything else, I have... You can't hear this either.
Casey:
I have an ATP embroidered polo.
Casey:
Finally, it is a real thing.
Casey:
I had gotten a pre-release version of this like a year ago.
Casey:
I might have accidentally lost it like a week ago.
Casey:
I really honestly don't know where it is.
Casey:
It's somewhere in the house.
Casey:
I can't find it.
Casey:
But anyway...
Casey:
Uh, I have a brand new ATP polo and it's made out of, what is this like Nike dry fit or something like that?
Casey:
It's, it's yeah, Nike dry fit.
Casey:
It reminds me a little bit of Under Armour, which sounds like a bad thing because Under Armour's marketing is like really bro-y, but it's actually quite nice.
Casey:
And I am very excited because I still at this moment anyway, have a jobby job and I wear collared shirts to my jobby job and I am excited to have a polo.
Casey:
So listeners, if...
Casey:
You have a jobby job where you can wear a polo if you just like collars.
Casey:
If you want to pop a collar, then please don't.
Casey:
But if you have to, if you're going to pop a collar at all, at least do it in an ATP shirt.
John:
You should buy two of these shirts so you can have two collars inside each other.
Casey:
You know what, John?
Casey:
I like where your head's at.
Casey:
That is a great idea.
Casey:
It's going to appear in a WWDC keynote.
Casey:
That is a fantastic idea.
Casey:
And if no other reason, you should buy this polo shirt because I fought tooth and nail with Marco particularly to get the polos offered.
Casey:
And I need some amount of vindication on this issue.
Casey:
So please buy a polo if you don't mind.
Casey:
Or buy anything really.
Casey:
The pins, buy all the things really is what we're trying to say.
Casey:
Buy all the things because it'd be great.
Casey:
And they're all really great and really high quality.
Casey:
Go to atp.fm slash store and buy some stuff.
Marco:
Yeah, and you have to do it soon if you want it.
Marco:
Everything except the pin, all the clothing items are all being pre-sold, and then at the end, they print it and ship it, just like a lot of these t-shirt campaigns that people like us do.
Marco:
The date that you have to order by for all the clothing items is May 7th at 8 p.m.
Marco:
Eastern.
Marco:
Hurry up.
Marco:
That's coming up fast.
Marco:
If you want the clothing items, hurry up.
Marco:
If you want the pins, they don't work that way.
Marco:
The pins ship pretty much immediately, but there's a fixed number of them that exist, and
Marco:
and i will tell you that beef this is the first time we're putting on the show we only announced it on twitter a few days ago we've already sold about a third of the pins so if you want pins really hurry up because i have a feeling they're going to sell out within not that much time after this episode airs maybe by next week but you know it's it's not going to be you're not going to have a lot of time on the pins and again if you want those clothing items order those by may 7th so uh otherwise
Marco:
We are really excited about this.
Marco:
I was very disappointed, honestly, last year in the quality of products that we got out of Teespring.
Marco:
And because of that, we agreed not to use Teespring anymore.
Marco:
And we were going to go back to Cotton Bureau anyway, but then they approached us with this amazing proposal for making a whole storefront with multiple items, many of which are things that not just anybody can go to them and print things like pins and embroidery items and stuff like that.
Marco:
And they are so good.
Marco:
They're so nice that we're just really happy working with them again.
Marco:
And their stuff is top-notch quality.
Marco:
And we're very happy that they now have much more affordable shipping outside of the U.S.
Marco:
We should also clarify that the designs of all of this...
Marco:
are based on the rainbow ATP logo from two years ago.
Marco:
We tried some new designs for this year.
Marco:
We couldn't come up with anything that was that very good in time.
Marco:
And everybody has been begging us since this campaign ended in mid-2016.
Marco:
Everyone loved the design.
Marco:
Everybody wanted more.
Marco:
And, you know, last year we had a great design too, but I think I have no regrets going back to this design for this year.
Marco:
And the storefront is actually going to remain open indefinitely.
Marco:
You know, we might add more stuff over time if, you know, maybe not waiting until WWDC next year.
Marco:
Maybe we'll do it a little bit more ahead of time or maybe we'll do something in the fall.
Marco:
Who knows?
Marco:
But the storefront will kind of be an indefinite thing with products coming in and out at different times.
Marco:
But right now,
Marco:
If you want the rainbow logo clothing items or pins, go now because your time is limited on those.
Marco:
And yeah, we'll see what happens.
Casey:
And as a final addendum, I cannot tell you the amount of times I've heard somebody say to me via Twitter or whatever.
Casey:
Oh, I just missed it.
Casey:
I kept meaning to do it and I never did it.
Casey:
And now I can't have that anymore.
Casey:
Don't wait.
Casey:
Don't wait.
Casey:
Just, just, just give us your frigging money.
Casey:
I mean, buy yourself a beautiful piece of ATP artwork in a shirt.
Casey:
Do what you can right now before you forget, because you will be kicking yourself if you forget.
Casey:
And especially if you're interested in the pins.
Casey:
We will probably eventually one day do another run of these pins.
Casey:
Eventually.
Marco:
Oh, we're definitely going to do more pins.
Marco:
The only question is when and which ones.
Casey:
Yeah, we're not sure when.
Casey:
And just like Marco said, we'll call attention to it probably when other things appear in the store.
Casey:
But hey, maybe set a every couple of months reminder in DUE to check out atp.fm slash store because we might put something else up.
Casey:
In fact, we've already got a couple of other things in the works as we speak.
Casey:
that we will probably be doing later in the year.
John:
Just Osborne-ed all our merch.
John:
Stop.
John:
Cut that out.
Casey:
What do you mean I Osborne-ed?
Casey:
What the hell does that even mean?
Casey:
Oh, come on.
John:
You'll look it up on Wikipedia later.
John:
In case you didn't see that movie.
John:
Even Marco's seen that one.
John:
One final, final bit.
John:
The Rainbow ATP logo merch is very popular when we offered it in 2016.
John:
People kept asking us to bring it out.
John:
But I believe that we actually sold more of my T-shirt design last year.
John:
Just saying.
John:
mm-hmm oh uh two uh two more quick angles on merchandise one i when i was browsing the cotton bureau site they saw a whole bunch of stuff and like at the bottom they show like the popular items and our stuff was down there but also uh mkbhd shirt was down there and i'm like huh
John:
he's got one day left on his campaign he's only sold like 500 shirts we can beat that so i really want to sell more shirts than his bazillion uh subscriber youtube channel so let's all go do that and win one for podcasting and the second thing is people have also been asking about stickers we do not have stickers for sale but if you are at wwdc and you find one of us chances are good that if you want a sticker we will give you one for free
Casey:
That is accurate.
John:
I know it's bad if you're not at WWDC and we may look into selling stickers someday, somehow, some way.
John:
They're not available now.
John:
But if you are lucky enough to be in San Jose with us, not even at WWDC, but in San Jose, and you find one of us and you want one of the stickers that we might have, we will just give you one.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Linode.
Marco:
Go to linode.com slash ATP to learn more.
Marco:
Linode is my favorite web host.
Marco:
I have been there, I think, about eight years now.
Marco:
I have all of my stuff hosted there.
Marco:
And the reason why is that it's just better than everything else I've tried.
Marco:
Not only is it a better value, you know, their plans start at just one gig of RAM for just $5 a month.
Marco:
That's a really good price.
Marco:
And if you look at their pricing for all their plans, and they have high memory plans, every time I've checked, they are either the best game in town or they're tied with the best game in town.
Marco:
They're an incredible value for what you get.
Marco:
All of this is running on enterprise-grade SSDs, Xeon E5 CPUs, 40 gigabit network backing it.
Marco:
They have all sorts of great features like load balancing.
Marco:
They have an API to automate the creation and resizing and things like that of new instances.
Marco:
It's incredibly nice to be a Linode customer because you just have so much available to you at such good pricing.
Marco:
You can even try stuff out with hourly billing.
Marco:
They have 24-7 friendly support if you ever need it.
Marco:
Phone support is also available.
Marco:
You can run Docker containers.
Marco:
You can run encrypted disks.
Marco:
You can run VPNs.
Marco:
Or you can be boring and just run a PHP MySQL web app like I do.
Marco:
Check out Linode today.
Marco:
And if you go to linode.com slash ATP, or if you use promo code ATP2018, you will get a $20 credit.
Marco:
If you choose the base plan, the one gig plan, that's four months.
Marco:
That's five bucks a month.
Marco:
So it's great.
Marco:
Check it out today, linode.com slash ATP.
Marco:
And if they're actually hiring, if you're looking for a job, linode.com slash careers.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Linode for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
Listener Casey asks, who definitely, definitely, definitely is not me.
Casey:
Definitely not me.
Casey:
Hey, would BitCode make an Intel to ARM transition easier?
Casey:
The reason I ask is, I mean, the reason that other Casey asks is his or my or somebody's understanding of BitCode is that basically what Apple eventually gets in the iTunes store or Mac app store is
Casey:
is kind of like an intermediate language, kind of an IL version of your code.
Casey:
So it's been quasi-compiled, but it's recompilable.
Casey:
That's probably not a word, but you get what I'm trying to say.
Casey:
Apple can recompile it to take advantage of new instructions on processors and things of that nature.
Casey:
So would that be enough to make an Intel to ARM transition easier?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
So I'm like, didn't we already talk about this on ATB?
John:
And then I remembered we talked about it with Chris Lattner, the creator of LLVM, and someone who knows a little something about bitcode and bytecode.
John:
And also, luckily, this is one of the rare, the only episode, I think, that we actually transcribed.
John:
So we'll put a link in the show notes to the section of our interview with Chris Lattner, where we talk about bitcode.
John:
And we talk about some of these same issues, like what is bitcode for?
John:
How is it different than bytecode?
John:
Does it help with portability?
John:
So I would encourage everyone to review that because we don't want to rehash it all here.
John:
But my short answer is that it doesn't help as much as you might think because bitcode is not a completely architecture agnostic representation.
John:
It is not the same as machine code.
John:
Like it is more independent than that.
John:
That's the whole point of it to be able to
John:
I think Chris gives an example about if you're running bitcode and compiling it down to machine code for a processor that doesn't have a particular kind of divide instruction, but then later you get a new processor and a new iPhone that has that divide instruction, they can then convert the bitcode to different machine code.
John:
So there is some portability there.
John:
But in terms of, oh, bitcode is completely architecture agnostic and you can compile it down to anything.
John:
It's not like, you know, it's not there's no virtual machine specification like there is with the JVM and Java bytecode and stuff like that.
John:
It's, you know, it's more independent than than hardware, but not as independent as we've defined a virtual machine like the JVM.
John:
And this is the bytecode for the virtual machine.
John:
And then.
John:
That's the model that you program against.
John:
And then that virtual machine runs on actual hardware.
John:
That's not the way bitcode works.
John:
So I mean, is it a factor?
John:
You know, bitcode isn't set in stone, just like the thing that preceded a bytecode wasn't set in stone.
John:
So there could be a successor to bitcode that really does help a lot with some kind of transition, especially if there's some kind of translation layer.
John:
if they change architectures but bitcode as it exists now i don't think is so enough help that it would make a significant difference only perhaps that it gives apple a leg up on oh we really do want to make a translation layer so we'll make the successor to bitcode and so we have that experience with both bytecode and bitcode for lvm we'll make i don't know bitcode 2 or something and that would help
Marco:
I have some follow-up about backpacks.
Marco:
Much too... I hate to announce this.
Marco:
I'm really sorry, Casey.
Marco:
I had to return the Tombin.
Marco:
What?
Marco:
Why?
Marco:
As we discussed last week, I got the Tombin Synapse 25, and going against my Peak Design everyday 20-liter backpack, I was hoping that the Tombin would store more stuff and have things more externally accessible than the Peak Design.
Marco:
My main problems at the peak are that it didn't hold enough and that I didn't like the design of the side pockets making everything a little hard to get to and the laptop compartment was a little bit tight and all the organization was kind of internal to the bag instead of external.
Marco:
So I got the Tombin25, and last week I raved about how awesome it seemed, but I hadn't actually traveled with it yet or really used it outside of the house even.
Marco:
I had just played with it in my office for a couple hours.
Marco:
And one thing I didn't do at the time of last week's recording was load it up with a lot of stuff and put it on.
Marco:
And when I tried that, I could not make it comfortable.
Marco:
Like it just felt really wrong on me.
Marco:
And so I'm guessing the Synapse 25 is just, you know, not a good fit for my particular, I don't know, size and shape, my back, whatever else.
Marco:
The curvature of it in like the lumbar area of your back just didn't, I couldn't find a way to make that sit no matter how I packed it.
Marco:
And I know people are probably going to write it and say, oh, I packed it wrong or I should try this or that.
Marco:
And I tried a lot of different ways of packing it and different things in the back and different weight distributions and everything.
Marco:
And I just could not find anything that made it feel right and feel comfortable on me.
Marco:
And then I took the exact same test load of stuff that I was packing it with and put it in the peak.
Marco:
And the very first try, it felt perfect.
Marco:
So, unfortunately, it just doesn't fit me.
Marco:
In its physical design, I had problems with the feel of the lumbar area as well as just the way the straps distributed the weight on my shoulders.
Marco:
I felt like the weight was too high and it didn't feel right.
Marco:
And I tried as many adjustments and rearrangements as I could, and I just couldn't get it to work for me.
Marco:
So I sent that back, unfortunately.
Marco:
They do have a very generous return policy that if something doesn't work out, you can send it back as long as you haven't taken it on a hike and worn it outside and stuff like that.
Marco:
So I appreciate that, and I hope to check them out again in the future.
Marco:
But it just didn't fit me physically.
Marco:
And meanwhile, the peak, I didn't have to jump through any hoops.
Marco:
I just put it on, and it fit perfectly.
Marco:
So my, my, my current backpack plan, you know, backpacks to me are like to do apps and email apps for Mike.
Marco:
Like I'm always like, I'm always like at most like 60 or 70% satisfied with one and always kind of keeping an eye out for others.
Marco:
But I don't buy them very often because I just, you know, they're, it's, they're expensive and it's kind of a pain.
Marco:
So my current stance is I'm back on the peak of,
Marco:
There's a lot about the Peak I do really like, so I'm just going to stick with it for a while and just deal with the fact that it doesn't hold that much.
Marco:
And on trips, just get reaccustomed to the idea that I'm just going to be bringing a small rolling suitcase for the overhead bin in addition to a backpack.
Yeah.
Casey:
So that's where I am on backpacks.
Casey:
I'm sorry to hear that.
Casey:
So in terms of like quality and things of that nature, it sounds like the Tom bin was fine.
Casey:
It's just the ergonomics against your, your, you know, that particular bag against your particular body.
Casey:
Just it wasn't compatible.
Marco:
As far as I can tell, yes.
Marco:
I mean, I don't want to go through a big parade of returns with them trying out all their other bags.
Marco:
I'm just going to kind of hold off and maybe if I ever visit Seattle, I'll visit their store.
Marco:
But for now, I'm happier enough with the peak.
Marco:
It's funny, actually, the Peak does actually work significantly better than the Tombin in one major way for the way I happen to use a bag, which is the vast majority of the time, my backpack is sitting next to my desk on the floor and the laptop is in it.
Marco:
And the power cable that keeps the laptop charged is kind of like floating out through the top of the bag, like with the laptop compartment open.
Marco:
So it's always kind of it's always plugged in, ready to go.
Marco:
and the tom bin bags they can't stand up by themselves the peak does because it's so much bigger and it's so much bulkier fabric and it's more rigid fabric um whereas the tom bin is more like just like a floppy bag basically and you can buy a frame for it but that makes it weird in ways that i don't i didn't want um so it actually the peak actually works significantly better the way my backpack is actually used most of the time which is standing up on the floor next to my desk where the the uh the tom bin just kind of would constantly flop over and
Marco:
so i guess you know it's good for that and and ultimately the peak is not bad i really do enjoy a lot about it it's a really nice bag um i just i wish it held more and there is a 30 liter version of the peak but by all accounts the 30 liter is way too big by what by what most people say for for uh what i'm going for which is fitting under an airline seat no matter what because like one thing that drives me nuts and this is kind of the reason why i'm sticking with the 20 i think
Marco:
When I travel, I always want my backpack under the seat in front of me on a plane.
Marco:
Always.
Marco:
There is never a situation where I want to put the backpack in the overhead bin.
Marco:
And I hate, like, I always, when I'm booking seats, I always go to Seat Guru and I check the plane.
Marco:
Not to see, like, you know, that I'm getting a seat that's not next to a bathroom or anything.
Marco:
I mainly am checking the seat I'm booking to make sure I have storage under the seat in front of me.
Marco:
Because on a lot of planes now and a lot of types of seats, you either have a bulkhead in front of you or a galley or you have those big computer boxes under the seats that take up half the space so you can't actually fit anything under there.
Marco:
So it's really hard to know without checking something like SeatGuru whether you have anywhere to put something under the seat.
Marco:
And I don't want to keep going up and down to the overhead compartment to get stuff out during a long flight.
Marco:
So I always want something that can fit under the seat.
Marco:
And so almost every bag...
Marco:
that can hold more than the peak 20 liter, if you actually put more in it, you start increasing the risk that it's not going to fit in the seat in front of you.
Marco:
So that's yet another reason why I think I'm coming to the conclusion that one backpack travel is probably not something I actually want.
Marco:
Because if I actually achieve one backpack travel for almost any trip, the backpack is going to have to be too big for me to reliably fit it under the seat in front of me on most flights.
Marco:
So I think I'm going to, again, just go back to having a small roller bag in the overhead bin and a small to medium-sized backpack for under the seat.
Casey:
Fair enough.
Casey:
That's a bummer.
Casey:
I'm sad that Tom Bidden didn't work out, but I still wholeheartedly and enthusiastically endorse it.
Casey:
So that's okay.
John:
The other thing that's imposing size constraints besides the underneath of the airline seat, perhaps, to Marco's comfort with backpacks is his back.
John:
So you've got the smaller backpack, and it doesn't quite hold your stuff, but maybe it fits your back better than a big one would.
John:
And so that if you've got any big backpack, that no matter how well it fit under a seat or not, it might just not feel comfortable on you.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Yeah, that's true.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
Tell us about your Facebook problems.
Marco:
So as we discussed, I believe it was last episode, I still had a Facebook account, which I never really used for much of anything.
Marco:
I hardly ever really posted anything ever.
Marco:
But the main reason I was using it was for membership in a couple of private groups.
Marco:
And I didn't want to lose that because it provided access to things like my beach town that I love so much and like local school stuff and everything else.
Marco:
And in the meantime, I discovered something wonderful.
Marco:
I discovered that the school group is useless because I actually looked at it.
Marco:
I'm like, have I ever gotten any value out of this?
Marco:
And the answer was no.
Marco:
And the beach group, I discovered there's also a bunch of beach people on Instagram.
Marco:
from the same town that post a lot of pictures and stuff.
Marco:
And I realized that what I mostly wanted out of that group was pictures of what's going on in town while I'm not there.
Marco:
And Instagram provides that without any of the angry old people that are complaining about whatever happened at the latest meeting with the village trustees and the mayor and all that crap.
Marco:
I mean, God, anybody out there who works in local government,
Marco:
i thank you i thank you for your service the storm that local government tends to be i can't imagine dealing with that every day because like if you've ever if you've ever been like part of a facebook group that has your local town stuff in it or if or if you ever gone to a meeting like a variance meeting or any kind of like town you know or village government meeting it's like parks and rec like the people are that bad
Marco:
anybody who works local government these jobs are oftentimes either unpaid or part-time very low-paid jobs they are completely thankless jobs and and they they are incredibly important for making things work functionally in our society and making things nice in our neighborhoods and all i ever see
Marco:
on Facebook groups and in these meetings is bitter, angry people just throwing complaints at the local government people and asking for the impossible and not understanding actual constraints and actual factors that went into things.
Marco:
So anybody who works out there in local government, I applaud you and I thank you.
Marco:
And I could never, ever do that.
Marco:
And I very much respect your ability to do that.
Marco:
Anyway, so I realized that the Facebook group for the Beachtown was pretty much 90% those complaints and 10% pretty pictures that I wanted to see.
Marco:
And Instagram is 100% pretty pictures I want to see and none of the complaints from the old people.
Marco:
So I just left the group and deleted my account and it's just done.
Marco:
I'm just following things on Instagram now, which yes, I know is owned by Facebook.
Marco:
So that kind of takes a lot of the wind out of the sails of why I'm leaving Facebook.
Marco:
But otherwise, I'm out and I'm happy that I'm out.
John:
Since everyone's been talking about Facebook, I guess because of the Cambridge Analytica thing and stuff on various podcasts I've been listening to, everyone has had that section of the podcast that we've had now on two or three podcasts in a row, which is like, I don't like Facebook, but I like Instagram.
John:
And yes, I know Instagram is owned by Facebook, so blah, blah, blah, right?
John:
But the more I keep hearing that, the more I think, yeah, so it's not great that it's owned by Facebook, but...
John:
By voting with your feet or whatever, voting with your virtual feet, you are sending the signal that I don't like how Facebook works.
John:
I like how Instagram works.
John:
Now, Instagram can change because it's owned by Facebook.
John:
It could start working in different ways.
John:
It already has with the stupid algorithmic timeline or whatever.
John:
Right.
John:
But that, I think, is just as strong a signal.
John:
It's like, well, you're not really sending any signal if you just delete your Facebook account, but just use Instagram.
John:
It's also owned by Facebook.
John:
Yes, you're sending this case.
John:
You're sending Facebook the signal.
John:
Facebook, bad.
John:
Instagram, good.
John:
More like Instagram, less like Facebook.
John:
And of course, if Facebook changes Instagram into Facebook, then you'll probably leave that too, right?
John:
But this, it's still a signal, even though it's going to the same company.
John:
If your goal is to the downfall of Facebook, I think you're going to have to wait for the generational turnover to...
John:
to bite them in the butt when uh the kids that are growing up now who don't want facebook account don't get one but um like i don't think the goal is tear down as a revenge fantasy the goal is stop making you know make things like facebook less the fewer things like facebook more things like instagram and so that's the signal you're sending so i don't you know if anyone gives you crap about that or says well it's pointless because you're going instagram because they're owned by facebook i don't totally agree with that i see where they're coming from
John:
But I think it's still a good move.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by RxBar.
Marco:
For 25% off your first order, visit rxbar.com slash ATP and enter code ATP at checkout.
Marco:
RxBars are great protein bars for a number of different occasions.
Marco:
breakfast on the go, snacks at the office, throw it in your bag so you can have it on the plane instead of the terrible plane food, toss it in your backpack for a bike ride or a hike, or as a snack for before or after a workout.
Marco:
I like to have RX bars personally.
Marco:
I eat a lot of these now.
Marco:
I like to have them at like the 3.30 or 4 o'clock in the afternoon hump where...
Marco:
I've had lunch at a regular time, like 12, and I'm getting a little bit hungry at about 3 or 4, and it's a little too early for dinner, and normally I would just grab some garbage snacks at that time and fill myself with garbage, and that's not great, and that's not healthy, and it just makes you more tired.
Marco:
RX bars have real food ingredients, and they say right on the front what's in them.
Marco:
It's the ones you've probably seen in stores recently.
Marco:
They say right on the front, they'll say something like, three egg whites, two dates, six almonds, and no BS.
Marco:
it's right there on the package what's in them you can tell they don't try to hide anything from you and it turns out you don't need any of the bs ingredients to taste good real food tastes great you can actually taste things like the cocoa and the chocolate ones real fruit in the fruit ones whether you like sweet or savory or chocolate or fruit flavors there is an rx bar for you there's 11 different flavor varieties and they're always experimenting and adding more all rx bars are gluten-free soy-free and dairy-free
Marco:
There's no artificial colors, no added sugar, no artificial flavors or preservatives or fillers or any of that crap.
Marco:
There's egg whites for protein, dates to bind it together, and nuts for texture.
Marco:
Egg white protein is actually a really good source of protein.
Marco:
It's easy for your body to absorb.
Marco:
These things are great.
Marco:
My favorite flavor personally I think is the chocolate coconut one.
Marco:
I also really like the apple cinnamon, and I actually just ordered yesterday, before I even knew they were sponsoring, I just ordered the coffee flavor, the chocolate coffee.
Marco:
I'm looking forward to that.
Marco:
Check it out today, rxbar.com slash ATP, and use code ATP at checkout to get 25% off your first order.
Marco:
That's rxbar.com slash ATP with code ATP for 25% off.
Marco:
Thank you so much to RxBar for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
John, you need to tell me about something.
Casey:
You need to tell me what is not a touch screen.
John:
It was like a school vacation week last week and I was away visiting family, seeing all the sites to be seen in a different state.
John:
And one of the week I had time to go to the movies, which is a rarity.
John:
and one of the things i noticed at the movie theater i was going to is an amc and we go to a local amc too but it was like a we had to buy tickets there because the amc the amc app and website and the fandago app and website were all just not doing well like they they didn't seem to be working at all i tried to buy the ticket and it would give me some obscure error you know some sort of like 503 proxy error from the back end get probably hit all the way up into an ios dialogue on my phone i'm like well whatever i'm
John:
So there's nobody there.
John:
It's the middle of the week.
John:
We're just going to go and show up and buy tickets.
John:
And we had no problem getting a ticket.
John:
You know, it was an empty theater in the middle of the day.
John:
Right.
John:
It was like a 10 a.m.
John:
movie show, which I love.
John:
I love going to movies when no one else is there.
John:
But so we had to go to the physical kiosk to buy movie tickets.
John:
And the kiosk was like there was like a screen that the point of sale person used to do whatever they were doing is not facing us.
John:
and there was also a screen facing us and at one point they said because these are all like reserved seating in the amc theaters these days it's like which seats do you want when you buy when you buy tickets through the app it also lets you pick seats by the way this is why we go to amc because reserved seating movie theaters is the best um and they say pick your seats and the screen in front of you facing you shows the seat layout in the theater with like the ones that are taken you know dimmed out and the ones that are still available highlighted or whatever
John:
And they have big labels on them like, you know, F1, F2, F3 or whatever.
John:
But the screen that's facing you, it's just a plain old LCD.
John:
And they have like a giant, you know, printed on like a brother label printer label on the bottom of the monitor facing you that says in all caps, not a touchscreen.
John:
Yeah.
John:
Because what you see on the screen is a bunch of seats, and you're like, oh, I want this seat, this seat, and this seat.
John:
Like, everybody just immediately reaches for the screen and touches seats A, B, C. Like, you just touch the seats you want, right?
John:
Because if the screen is facing you, it's right there.
John:
But to stop people from doing that, they have to have the sticker.
John:
And not just have the sticker, which, by the way, is not part of the monitor.
John:
Like, this has been added afterwards, like added by the dealer in car parlance, right?
John:
The sticker.
John:
Also...
John:
As part of the spiel that they do, the sales pitch that the poor worker there is mindlessly going through every time they say, what show do you want to see?
John:
Blah, blah, blah.
John:
They go through the whole thing.
John:
There is a part in the little speech where they say...
John:
please select the seats you want and remember that is not a touchscreen.
John:
It was part of the thing.
John:
And they were saying it kind of like bored offhand and mindlessly that it is literally part of the script that they go through every single time.
John:
They have to warn every single person that it's not a touchscreen and have the sticker.
John:
And I bet people still touch the screen.
John:
So I tweeted about this and people replied to me and they say, despite being told that it's not a touchscreen, despite the label, I also touched it or I've seen other people touch it or I work in a movie theater and people touch it all the time.
John:
There's no way you can stop them from touching the screen.
John:
So I was really thinking about how...
John:
how fundamentally now not just for like little kids this is the whole thing of like oh little kids aren't they funny they're already swiping on every screen they see because they grew up with phones and ipads right everybody senior citizens adults little kids teenagers everybody if presented with the screen and anything appears on the screen it looks like there's any possibility that you could touch it before any part of their brain kicks in their tiny lizard brain goes much touch screen so this is like the default way to interact with screens to the point where if you
John:
ever have a screen that it doesn't allow that you need a giant all caps label and a verbal warning and you still won't stop people from touching it and all this makes me think i posted about this because i just thought it was a you know a funny extreme thing but it's a big change and i the i finished straight by saying how long before macbooks need a similar sticker remember when max always used to say like macbook pro right underneath the the screen right instead instead of saying mac approach it just say not a touchscreen in all caps um and this gets back to the touchscreen laptop thing which
John:
I don't think is a particularly great thing to have.
John:
I think it puts fingerprints on your screen.
John:
I think it's gross.
John:
I don't really think I would want one.
John:
But as every single person who has ever encountered a laptop with a touchscreen says, once you have one, you will find yourself touching every laptop screen.
John:
Not all the time.
John:
Not that you're constantly using it for a touch because that would be bad.
John:
There's a reason you have a trackpad.
John:
There's a reason you might have a mouse attached.
John:
But...
John:
once you are able to touch it for anything, you expect to be able to touch every laptop screen.
John:
It's like one of those one-way valves.
John:
Before you have a touchscreen, fine, you're fine, no big deal.
John:
Once you have one, then you just expect it all the time.
John:
And this has been happening in the PC world.
John:
And so we talked about this before, about the touch bar and if and when Apple will ever succumb to this trend and finally put a touchscreen on Macs.
John:
And for me, it's starting to feel like the time when Apple wouldn't make a bigger phone and the entire market was saying, no, we love bigger phones.
John:
And it's like, well, is it that big a deal?
John:
Some big phones, you know, do people really want them?
John:
They're kind of dumb.
John:
This phone shouldn't be too big, doesn't fit in your pocket, blah, blah, blah.
John:
You can have all the intellectual reasons you want, but the bottom line is if people buy them and maybe they don't, you know, like a touchscreen laptop, maybe they don't love them or like them so much, but if they just...
John:
If they just expect them, if the expectation is that every screen in the world must be a touchscreen, otherwise it's basically considered broken by everybody of all ages of every generation, simply because occasionally the most natural thing to do is touch a screen.
John:
Not all the time, not as your old soulmate of interaction, but sometimes your body, having been trained by smartphones and iPads and everything else,
John:
just expects to be able to reach out and touch the screen and so rather than verbal and visual warnings on screens we it seems to me that we just need to make every screen to touch screen just for those cases where it is it does feel natural to touch the screen even though i still don't want anyone touching the screen on any of my computers of course have you ever accidentally touched the screen on your own laptop hell no
John:
i would never do that now here's like this is a one-way valve if i got a laptop that had a touchscreen i bet i would touch it and then i bet i would start touching my non-touchscreen laptops and be annoyed i mean we've all done this right have you ever pinched zoom a magazine i have i have also reached for the forward slash key on my lap while reading a magazine to do a search for it's like you know if you're in a pager and unix or whatever
John:
and gotten far enough where my finger has basically touched the top of my thigh and realized there's no keyboard down there.
John:
You can't do a search in a magazine.
John:
I don't think, I think I might have swiped once.
John:
Mostly it's pinch to zoom that gets me.
John:
I pinch to zoom on paper.
John:
It happens all the time.
John:
Humans are dumb little monkeys.
Marco:
Yeah, I never touched a screen like my own laptop screen at all until about two years ago where it started happening about once a year.
Marco:
I will be reading something and will try to touch a screen to scroll it.
Marco:
That's usually what happens.
John:
It would be worse if the simulator.
John:
I'm surprised you haven't done that with doing all your iOS stuff because what you're seeing is visually like this is an iOS interface.
John:
You should touch it, but you can't.
Marco:
I think this plays into, I think, a lot of PC strategy issues.
Marco:
Apple has been standing the line firmly that touchscreen laptops are not good, that people don't want them, people shouldn't want them.
Marco:
That's not the right solution.
Marco:
But man, the market just keeps saying otherwise.
Marco:
And there's a lot of downsides to it.
Marco:
There's a lot of consideration that has to be done to do it well.
Marco:
And yeah, your laptop will be covered in fingerprints.
Marco:
They all already are.
Marco:
That's the thing, though.
Marco:
They all already are.
Marco:
well that too but like my ipad's covered in fingerprints yeah because they the coding sucks on the 10.5 pro but also like that's just the reality of having an ipad you know at some point i'm gonna like have to wipe my 15 inch macbook pro screen on my jeans to get all the figures off but like
Marco:
That is what people are doing.
Marco:
At what point, if it hasn't already happened, at what point will most people go into an Apple store thinking, oh, maybe I'll switch to a Mac, touch the screen, it doesn't work, and they'll be like, well, that kind of sucks.
John:
Those are more stories I got on Twitter of people who work in Apple stores, of people who see it, saying people come into Apple stores, try to touch the screens on the Mac, and expect it to work.
John:
They don't know anything about Macs.
John:
They just come in and expect it to work.
John:
And sometimes they think it's broken or will tell the person they think the thing is broken and the nice salespeople will lead them towards an iPad in that case.
John:
But it's just the expectation.
John:
And I think Apple's reasoning behind...
John:
It's not you don't want to have your arm sticking out.
John:
It's not a good way to interact with laptop.
John:
That's all true.
John:
But like, I think the thing they're missing is like, you're not touching it all the time.
John:
Of course, most of the time you'd be using the trackpad, right?
John:
But just every once in a while, like when you find yourself swiping to scroll on the screen, it's not as if you're saying now I have to exclusively touch my laptop screen is the way to control it.
John:
That would be dumb.
John:
And Apple emphasizes that you would never if we took away the trackpad and said you have to the only way you can use your laptop is touching the screen.
John:
Nobody would like that unless you can convert it into a tablet or whatever.
John:
But
John:
And as an occasional input method, it's surprisingly sticky.
John:
And mostly because Apple has themselves to blame.
John:
They are the one that showed that touchscreens can work and be insanely popular.
John:
There were touchscreens for years and years and everyone hated them and no one used them for anything.
John:
It's Apple's own fault that touchscreens have raced through the industry to become the dominant form of interaction with computing devices.
John:
Because the phone is now the dominant computing device.
John:
And the number one and basically only way that people interact with phones is by touching them.
John:
I'm not going to be touching the 8K screen on my Mac Pro, I can tell you that.
Casey:
Oh, my goodness.
John:
Unless it lays down, like, a cool, like, what is that?
John:
Microsoft has the worst damn names I cannot remember.
John:
Studio Books?
Casey:
Surface Studio, I believe.
John:
Surface Studio, yes.
John:
I would consider that.
John:
If you want to get me an 8K drafting table, I would consider it Apple.
Casey:
All right, so speaking of touchscreens, let's talk about the iPhone X user survey.
Casey:
So techpinions.com, written by Ben Bajaran?
Casey:
Bajaran, I think.
Casey:
Thank you.
Casey:
Ben writes that he and his team conducted a survey of iPhone X users, and there's a lot of customer set to be talked about, and the customer satisfaction for darn near everything is great.
Casey:
It starts, even face ID, the customer satisfaction is between 90 and 100% based on this one survey.
Casey:
Battery life between 90 and 100%.
Casey:
Things fall off a little bit.
Casey:
How it feels in your hand without a case fall off a smidge more, still at about 85% for portrait mode.
Casey:
Portrait selfies, now we're down in like the 65% range.
Casey:
But then we start talking about Siri and it's an inverted hockey stick because we go from like 90s to 100s to 80s to 60s to 20%.
Casey:
One out of five people is satisfied with Siri and that's it.
Casey:
And I would like to meet that one out of five persons because who is actually satisfied with Siri?
Casey:
People who don't use it?
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
What is this?
Casey:
But yeah, I don't know that there's all that much to discuss here other than to say, I don't understand.
Casey:
Well, I was going to say, I don't understand why Apple doesn't see this as a problem, but that's unfair.
Casey:
I think Apple sees this as a problem and I've,
Casey:
I've heard through the grapevine that there's been a lot of hiring for the Siri team lately.
Casey:
But golly, it's more apparent with every passing day how broken Siri is.
Casey:
And God help me for sending Marco down on this tangent, but how broken modern MacBook keyboards are.
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, so keyboards aside, because we talk about that every other episode, what concerns me so much about the Siri thing is that it seems like Apple has just woken up to how bad Siri is since the HomePod came out and was panned for having bad Siri.
Marco:
But that was not new.
Marco:
All of us knew that Siri is mediocre to terrible much of the time for years now.
Marco:
and it really does seem like that caught apple by surprise so this is it's like yet another thing similar to the laptops yes i get worried when apple it gets so blindsided by reactions or problems that seem so obvious to its customers i don't know how they could have not known that you know just like
Marco:
I don't know how they could have not known that the reaction to the MacBook Pros would have been so negative.
Marco:
I don't know how they could have not known that Siri was as bad as it is until recently.
Marco:
But it certainly does seem like they haven't been doing much about it until recently.
Marco:
So that is concerning.
Marco:
On the bigger picture, though, I was kind of curious.
Marco:
Not to make this all about how much Siri sucks because that's not news and also will not change anytime soon.
Marco:
I'm a little curious to kind of morph this topic and steal it.
Marco:
One of my favorite bits on the show was the iPhone 7 exit interview.
Marco:
And I kind of want to do like the iPhone 10 mid-cycle performance review.
Yeah.
Casey:
That was very well done, Marco.
Casey:
I'm very proud of you.
Marco:
Thank you.
Marco:
Yeah, I assume it's a real thing.
Marco:
He watches The Office a lot.
Yeah.
Marco:
He knows the words, but only from TV.
Marco:
And I know, John, you don't have one, but I was at least curious to talk about just like what we think of the iPhone X now that it's roughly halfway through its year of being the top phone.
Marco:
What do we think of it?
John:
Well, let me go first, because even though I don't have a phone, because I do play with my iPhone and just to cap off this article is when I saw this article teased, I forget where I saw it teased on some site that was might have been a loop inside or whatever.
John:
It was like the iPhone survey broken down by category.
John:
And you're never going to guess which category had the lowest score.
John:
It was some kind of tease like that.
John:
That was like, guess which gets which bar in the bar chart is going to be really small.
John:
right and before i clicked through the link i thought i wonder which one it's going to be and immediately i thought it's got to be face id right like everyone loves everything else but face id is the only thing that's possibly shaky on this phone right and the reason i thought that is because i hadn't even considered that siri would be one of the bars right had someone said oh by the way siri's the bar i'm like oh that's the one but i didn't even consider siri would be one of the bars because it's just such a non-
John:
such a non-factor in the experience that my experience of using my phone and i never see anyone in my family really use it for much of anything either that i didn't even think it would be on the chart um and so on on the iphone 10 on this survey you know face id is right up there like it's it's not even like one of the lower bars it's kind of middle tier bar you know above 90 percent um and my experience of seeing my wife use her iphone 10 she doesn't care anything about tech she's not
John:
super impressed by the amazing technology that implements face id she has a few complaints about situations where it doesn't work but overall i don't hear about face id from her like it's not it's not an issue it's not a thing that she tells me she's annoyed about or i never see her struggle with it it has different trade-offs in touch id but she has accommodated them
John:
and like i said she's not inclined to accommodate them because she's she's dazzled by the g-wiz technology i'm dazzled by the g-wiz technology i think it's amazing that it works but as far as she's concerned it's just her phone and she unlocks it and it's fine and so i feel like it is my proxy for her for her satisfaction with the phone i i haven't heard any complaints yes she complains to me if there's something wrong with her phone as if i made it i didn't make it but uh she likes it she likes her phone she doesn't complain about it it does all the things it's supposed to do uh
John:
And even though she was coming from a 6S Plus, right, even though the 10 is a little bit smaller, I haven't even heard complaints about that in terms of screen area.
John:
I haven't heard complaints about battery life.
John:
So I think the iPhone 10 is a very successful product.
John:
Again, not using one myself.
John:
I can't really judge it against the 7 or the 6S Plus or whatever.
John:
But it seems really good to me.
Casey:
I think it's
Casey:
And before anyone writes in, I have tried all of the tricks, all of them.
Casey:
I have tried them.
Casey:
I have turned off attention detection.
Casey:
I have turned up and down the speed to which the phone locks.
Casey:
I've tried it.
Casey:
I appreciate the help.
Casey:
I do, but I've tried it.
Casey:
But yeah, especially at night when I don't have my contacts in and the phone is, I mean, to be fair, the phone is like three or four inches from my face.
Casey:
If I don't actively touch and fiddle with the screen constantly, I feel like it just almost instantly locks itself all the time.
Casey:
And it's the weirdest thing.
John:
Isn't there supposed to be an iOS update, speaking of close to your face, that makes it work better close up?
John:
Is that like a rumored thing for iOS 12?
John:
Or is that a thing that came in a point updater?
Casey:
I think it might have already come because it has gotten better, but it is not perfect by any stretch of the imagination.
Casey:
But in regular working, so you could reasonably treat that as an accessibility issue.
Casey:
And I'm asking for an accessibility affordance.
Casey:
And I can understand that argument.
Casey:
But in normal use, I don't have the Ray-Ban sunglasses that apparently everyone else has.
Casey:
And so I don't have any problem with my sunglasses on.
Casey:
My Warby Parkers work great.
Casey:
I even when I have eyeglasses on, which I occasionally wear to get me to like slightly less blurry vision, it still works fine.
Casey:
If I have a beard, don't have a beard, it works fine.
Casey:
So in normal use, it actually works quite well.
Casey:
It's only this nighttime really, really close to my face that it all falls down.
Casey:
The lack of home button.
Casey:
I actually really like it.
Casey:
Like swiping to get out of an app, swiping the bottom to go between apps, the up and to the right, like L action in order to do the multitasking switcher.
Casey:
I really, really like the gesture based navigation and I am all in on it.
Casey:
And if I had to go back to a phone that didn't have this, I think it would be really, really frustrating.
Casey:
I don't know if it actually is any faster, but gosh, does it ever feel faster?
Casey:
Even if it isn't.
Casey:
Um, what are the little, uh, Animojis?
Casey:
Animojis, I've used them like five times.
Casey:
It was exactly what everyone thought.
Casey:
It was a flash in the pan.
Casey:
We've never looked back.
Casey:
I still think the idea is fair and I still think having like seasonal Animojis would be cool.
Casey:
Like say you only had Santa, you know, from, uh, November until January and maybe you only had a jack-o'-lantern from like, I don't know, September through the end of October or something like that.
Casey:
I think that would be a lot of fun.
Casey:
They haven't done that yet.
Casey:
Uh, so Animoji kind of, eh.
Casey:
I love the, I do like the size of it.
Casey:
Of course, I'll always miss the size of the four series phones.
Casey:
I wish I had the gumption to use it without a case.
Casey:
I'm using it with the Apple provided leather case, which is nice, but I've just taken it out of the case and it is considerably thinner and, and feels much better without the case.
Casey:
But given that the back is glass, I am petrified to drop this thing and, and shatter it.
Casey:
So it lives in the case always.
Casey:
Oh, and we also talked about recently how much I, and I think Marco was the other one who said the same, love, love, love inductive charging.
Casey:
It's such a stupid thing on paper.
Casey:
Like, who cares?
Casey:
Is your life really that hard, Casey, that you can't plug in your freaking phone at night?
Casey:
No, it's not that hard.
Casey:
But it's delightful to not have to.
Casey:
And I quite like that.
Casey:
So love the inductive charging.
Casey:
Love the gesture-based navigation.
Casey:
Face ID, four stars out of five.
Casey:
And oh, and the cameras are really great too.
Casey:
In portrait mode, it's decent.
Casey:
In the right situation, it can be incredible.
Casey:
And in every other situation, it's passable unless your name is Joe Steele.
Marco:
and i think that's it all right so uh i don't care about the portrait mode i do think that it is possible to shoot decent looking photos with it that just isn't the common case otherwise i do love the cameras the cameras are great face id is not good enough it's fine but it's not great
Marco:
Very, very similar to first-generation Touch ID, but even a little bit more frustrating, I think, sometimes in why it fails or when it fails.
Marco:
I really think Face ID needs to get a lot better, and hopefully it will.
Marco:
That's the kind of thing Apple tends to be pretty good at.
Marco:
I think it's a little bit harder of a problem than Touch ID to make it that reliable, but I think they can do it.
Marco:
One thing that bugs me about the size is that... So I'm a left-handed phone user, even though I'm right-handed, because that's just how my pockets worked out, because I grew up without phones first, then added phones.
Marco:
So I hold my phone in my left hand.
Marco:
Almost every time I'm putting my phone back into my pocket, when I'm done using it, I will very frequently...
Marco:
accidentally tap something on the screen with my left hand's middle finger on the far right center edge of the screen on the way into my pocket and so this what it usually ends up happening is i'll be typing a message in in messages where it has a little microphone button on the right side of the text field to send an audio message and
Marco:
And I'll turn the phone off.
Marco:
As I lower the phone into my pocket, the screen wakes back up or maybe I doesn't turn it off right.
Marco:
Anyway, on the way into my pocket, my middle finger will accidentally brush that edge of the screen, tucks the audio message button, and I'll hear boop boop.
Marco:
As it goes in my pocket.
Marco:
And the next time I take it out of my pocket, there's like a big audio block there waiting to be sent.
Casey:
This can't be the case because I have this problem and I hold my phone in my right hand.
Casey:
I think and I actually meant to mention this.
Casey:
I always blamed it on my case.
Casey:
I felt like my case occasionally like the again, the Apple leather case.
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
I just figured it out.
Marco:
Go ahead.
Marco:
There's a feature that no one knows about where if you hold the phone up to your ear... Damn it, Marco!
Casey:
You've got to give me a chance.
Casey:
Oh, man!
Casey:
That's it!
Casey:
I've got to turn that off!
Casey:
So I think that's exactly what it is.
Marco:
Okay, now my iPhone X is perfect.
John:
Wait, what is the feature you think it is?
Marco:
The feature is if you're in messages, if you hold the phone up to your ear as if you're going to talk on the phone, it will do an audio message just by detecting the ear detection there.
Marco:
So what's happening is as I'm putting it in my pocket...
Marco:
The screen isn't fully asleep yet, and so it thinks I'm putting it up to my ear because it's getting blocked by my leg on the way into my pocket.
Casey:
Yep, I think you're right.
Marco:
And so it starts an audio message, then goes to sleep and realizes it doesn't need that and cancels it.
John:
So the root problem is you're not actually putting your phone... You're not actually hitting the power button or something to put it to sleep before you shove it in your pocket.
John:
Because once it locks, it's not going to unlock again until you have Face ID on it.
John:
It's not going to wake itself up and unlock itself and then do the proximity detection, right?
Yeah.
Marco:
i don't care this is the best thing ever that we i guess solve this so this is what i thought okay settings messages raise to listen turn it off now if i hold it up to my headphones oh okay does nothing so that oh man that should solve it casey i owe you one yeah i'm yeah i'm trying this right now uh yep i'm gonna turn that off
Casey:
Anyway, I always blamed it on the case because I agree with you, John, that it seems like the phone isn't entirely off.
Casey:
And I always thought that the case was just misfiring or something because, again, I've never really had the phone naked.
Casey:
But I was going to say, Marco, and you beat me to it, that I think maybe it's a combination of both.
Casey:
Maybe, like, Marco, your finger is grazing the screen.
Casey:
Maybe my case is just preventing the sleep-wake button from being hit.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
But it's a combination of that and I think the proximity to our leg or something that is causing it, or maybe it's just the accelerometer, who knows, but one way or another, it's causing it to think, oh, I need to start recording now.
Casey:
And so I cannot count the amount of times that I'll feel a phantom buzz in my pocket, which as a religious Apple Watch wearer, that's a very unusual circumstance for my phone to buzz.
Casey:
And so I'll feel a buzz in my pocket, which usually is indicative that the phone is still on.
Casey:
And it took the alert away from the watch, or I should say that the watch never got the alert in the first place.
Casey:
And so I pick up the phone, and I'm still sitting in messages, and there's like a 40-minute audio recording, just like you were saying, Marco, just sitting there.
Casey:
And so I'm not sure what the real issue is.
Casey:
I agree that raised to wake might be part of the problem, but I flipped off that switch, and both of us will have to see if that makes a difference.
Marco:
Yeah, I wonder – there might also be some kind of issue where – because you know how the iPhone X will – and actually I think the 7 and 8 also will detect when they're picked up and will like unsleep the screen because it's been picked up.
Marco:
And maybe the detection of that is kind of misfiring where –
Marco:
Maybe we are putting it to sleep.
Marco:
Oh, it's called Raise to Wake.
Marco:
Thank you all in the chat.
Marco:
So maybe the action of lowering the phone from hand level back down to our pants, maybe that's triggering Raise to Wake right after we put it to sleep.
Casey:
Yeah, very well could be.
Marco:
I mean, if it hasn't moved from our face by that much...
Marco:
theoretically face id could fire during that time read our face on the way down like it it is possible but yeah so that that's that's an annoying thing i hope i hope i just fixed it um so getting back to my iphone 10 performance review um other than that yeah and and face id kind of just not being fast enough or or good enough i
Marco:
I really like this phone.
Marco:
The battery life has been surprisingly good for me.
Marco:
I don't think I've ever seen it go past, I think, 20%.
Marco:
And even then, that's rare.
Marco:
Most days, I'm ending it above 50.
Marco:
And that's partially because there are Qi chargers all over my place, and I love Qi charging.
Marco:
As you said, it's so good.
Marco:
So I'm just really, really happy with the power situation on this phone.
John:
Speaking of cheap charging, a couple people were complaining on Twitter today about the air power map that still hasn't materialized.
John:
We've mostly forgotten about that, but it's worth mentioning Apple did pre-announce a product that we're still kind of waiting for.
John:
I'm shocked.
John:
Yeah, I mean, this is a really long one, though.
John:
This is not like, oh, they pre-announced it.
John:
It's so long that I frequently forget that it exists.
John:
And I know technically probably we're within, like, they said, oh, next year.
John:
So basically any time until December 31st, and they've technically met their deadline.
John:
But this is another case where it's clear that something has gone wrong somewhere.
John:
Yeah, and it's definitely concerning that this seems to be happening a lot recently.
John:
Maybe it's because they made it white and they can't make it the white.
John:
Well, the good thing about it is, as you said, it's not stopping you from wirelessly charging your phone, right?
John:
They did use a third-party standard and that's basically saved their bacon because no one is stuck without a wireless charger for your phone.
John:
You can get one and they're cheap and they're plentiful and there's good ones and bad ones, but we don't have to wait for Apple's thing.
John:
And by the time Apple's thing comes out, everyone will have already bought them except for people who haven't yet bought an iPhone 10.
Marco:
The great thing about this, they are so cheap and they're diverse.
Marco:
There's a much larger diversity of Qi chargers out there than Apple would ever make themselves.
Marco:
There's different form factors, different shapes, different sizes, lots of different price points, different intended environments for them to be in, lots of different styles and looks, different materials they're made out of.
Marco:
It's actually really a wonderful little ecosystem.
Marco:
I'm just very happy with Qi charging.
Marco:
it's one of those things like i'm sure the android people are like yelling at all of us like you know we knew this like three years ago just like the opera people like i'm sure opera had chi charging first before everybody then the simpsons had it and then android had it and now we have it okay so if we can set that aside yes we all know that we were not the first to this but it's still really nice and we now know this so we're very very happy otherwise like the size of the iphone 10 i think is perfect for me
Marco:
It is a little tall and a little hard to get my hand around sometimes for certain things.
Marco:
But for the most part, it is significantly more holdable for me than the Plus phones ever were.
Marco:
And I do love the screen space.
Marco:
I actually hope they don't shrink the margins anymore, like the bezel around, because I'm worried that I'll have more accidental tap issues when I hold my phone without a case, just like what I thought I was doing with my finger on the side.
Marco:
Otherwise, I'm just very happy with it.
Marco:
It's fast.
Marco:
I love the home button list thing.
Marco:
One thing that I...
Marco:
Whenever I have to use Tiff's phone or my iPad or things that are not the iPhone X, what surprises me most is that I can't tap the screen to turn it on.
Marco:
That one little touch, even on the iPhone 8, tapping the screen does not wake the screen up.
Marco:
Tapping the screen to turn it on is awesome.
Marco:
I love that.
Casey:
Yeah, I forgot about that.
Casey:
That's a very good point.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
And then I also and having swipe up to go home is great.
Marco:
I still don't like the increased motion and gestures and time that it takes to force quit an app.
Marco:
But I very much like how fast it is to switch apps now because you just swipe across the home indicator.
Marco:
That's so good.
Marco:
When you're flipping between apps, that is fantastic.
Marco:
Given that switching apps for me is a more common action than terminating one...
Marco:
I'll take that trade-off.
Marco:
I do wish that they could do something great for terminating ones, and I think they still can.
Marco:
I think if they do pull up, and then if just swiping up in the app switcher on an app would terminate it instead of having to hold it down first, then do that, they could significantly improve that.
Marco:
Control center sucks.
Casey:
And see, I disagree.
Casey:
I don't understand why everyone has a burr up their butts about this.
Marco:
So I'm finally accustomed to it a little bit more.
Marco:
But now every time I try to pull out notifications, I miss and I put on control center.
Marco:
Like going for something that I have to pull down from the top of the screen on my iPhone 10 is a lot like plugging in a micro USB cable.
Marco:
It seems like it takes me three tries to get it.
Marco:
to get the right thing every time so true like i'm constantly pulling down the wrong thing for what i want um so that that is one area that i think needs significant improvement so where are they going to hide that though speaking of improvement everyone's like oh i hate control center and we all think it's going to need to reach right okay but then what how do you fix it i think maybe it might be worth investigating combining the two screens like you know phones are optimized pretty well for scrolling
Marco:
So maybe Control Center becomes just a vertically scrolling thing where the notifications just go below the controls that you have picked.
Marco:
Like, there's enough space that they could actually do that.
Marco:
Because right now, they have this giant padding on top of Control Center where they basically have what looks like a 150-pixel-tall status bar area.
Marco:
They can just shrink that down to, like, you know, 40...
Marco:
And if they shrink that down, but with the default number of controls in Control Center, you'd have room for like three notifications above the fold.
John:
But you would put them at the bottom?
John:
Yeah.
John:
Put the notifications at the bottom?
John:
I think people like to peek at their notifications and are expecting to look at the top of the screen.
Marco:
But they don't show in the top now.
Marco:
They show kind of in the middle because they show a giant clock above it.
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm trying to think of solutions, too.
John:
And like, you know, there's always the punt, which is like, we'll just make it a setting and people can decide which which is their most frequently used control and assign it to.
John:
Do you want notifications to be the little ear or notifications to be the whole rest of the thing?
John:
But I don't have any great ideas either.
John:
I'm just wondering.
John:
Like, I think it's a hard problem.
John:
Like, part of the reason it's crappy is because there's no obvious good solution, right?
John:
So I'm not sure what they're going to do there.
Casey:
See, and that's the funny thing to me is, and I will fully admit that I am the minority here.
Casey:
I am not trying to say I'm right.
Casey:
I understand everyone else disagrees with me.
Casey:
But I actually...
Casey:
I feel like I've been trained on where control center is for a long time.
Casey:
Like, it's not like I just figured this out yesterday.
John:
Like my body, people know where it is.
John:
It's just hard to reach depending on how long your thumb is and how you hold your phone.
Casey:
So it's a little hard to reach.
Casey:
Sure.
Casey:
But I mean, I don't know.
Casey:
I don't feel like it's as egregious as everyone else seems to think.
Casey:
And, and I mean, I'm just saying, that's just me.
Casey:
I'm not trying to say that I'm right.
Casey:
Cause I can hear all the angry tweets and emails coming, but it's just, for me, I don't think it's that big a deal.
Casey:
And I'm sure it could be better, but I don't think it's that bad.
Casey:
I don't understand why everyone has such a,
John:
such a big issue with it well you do understand it's because it's hard to reach and it's now uh there's a potential to get the wrong thing like marco occasionally gets notifications when he doesn't want oh not occasionally every time and it was not a thing that happened with it in its old location which is obviously a non-starter because of the lack of home but one thing that no one has mentioned so far is the notch so i guess we're all don't care about that
John:
uh true yeah i don't really care yeah i don't really care either i mean like it's it's not ideal and as i said emphatically many many shows ago apple does not like the notch and it will go away once apple can get rid of it uh as soon as they can get themselves over the branding that they've developed with it and by the way there's been this rash of uh
John:
of notch imitator phones where even phones that don't need to have a notch will add one sometimes even just like displaying the screen underneath where the notch is because the phone os has no idea that the notch is there purely for sort of trade dress you know uh imitation reasons to capitalize on on apple's marketing so i think the notch marketing is is a real thing and that may make apple keep it for a little bit longer but apple doesn't like the notch either but it's great to see that basically everybody like despite the fact that apple doesn't really want the notch and it is a necessary evil
John:
it doesn't bother people and daily use you you forget it's there you get used to it perhaps the only time you have any interaction with it at all is when you go for control center and realize there's this divided region at the top because of the little ears and all that but seems to be for all the talking we all did about it ahead of time and not knowing what it would be like pretty much universally nobody cares about the notch oh i will say one more complaint i have about it as i turned off the screen and realized the screen scratches incredibly easily and
Marco:
And my screen is a mess.
Marco:
I have so many scratches on the screen.
Marco:
I've never had a visible scratch on a phone screen before.
Marco:
And this one scratches like crazy.
Marco:
You're putting it in your pocket without a pouch.
Marco:
That's why.
Marco:
No, but every other phone can tolerate it.
Marco:
From what I've gathered from asking people and things like that, it seems like they did change the screen glass material to be more resistant to shattering by making it presumably a little bit softer.
Marco:
And therefore, it now scratches more easily but won't shatter as much.
John:
that's wonderful for people who drop their phones and hope it doesn't shatter i'm not one of those people and so they definitely you know they made the wrong trade-off for me but i i can't deny that it's it's probably the right trade-off for most people considering like how many shattered phones i see and how many people do drop their phones and how little scratches probably bother normal people in fact how little large portions of the population can even see the scratches yeah
Marco:
Yeah, so I think this is my one major complaint about it besides the other one major complaints I had is that the screen scratches way too easily.
Marco:
And the problem is like some people say, well, why don't you just put on a screen protector or something like that?
Marco:
The problem is the shape of this – yeah, first of all, gross.
Marco:
Second of all, the shape of this phone –
Marco:
is because the screen just kind of curves right down into the edge there and the back kind of curves right out of the back, the side profile, everything is like a gradual curve.
Marco:
If you stick something on it, like a screen protector or any kind of decal or anything...
Marco:
It's not going to follow that curve.
Marco:
So you're basically going to have like an edge that your fingers will have to rub against along the edge of the screen where the screen printer just is like sitting on top of the screen.
Marco:
And then you have this rough edge that you have to move your finger over all the time that's definitely going to start peeling up and getting dust under it at some point.
Marco:
That is not very good to me.
John:
That's spoken like someone who was annoyed by scratches on their phone.
John:
yeah you're also noted by the tiny little like again regular people have those screen protectors all the time they love them speaking of my uh i saw my sister over break and she has a screen protector on her uh phone as well it's like i don't know what it's made out of like plastic it's like one of those rigid screen protectors plus a giant case plus all sorts of other stuff anyway she was holding her phone in her mouth while she was doing something else and it started to slip and she bit down to keep it from slipping and she cracked the screen protector with her teeth
John:
this is so we're talking about like oh i'm annoyed that scratches on my phone screen and i don't want to put a protector on because there'd be this thin edge meanwhile other people are biting their phones to break them and you know and and then so and i saw her like you know a couple days later same same crack screen protector it's not like she's gonna get a new one she can still see the screen it still works that's how people use their phones they're not as precious as we are
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Eero.
Marco:
Finally, Wi-Fi that works.
Marco:
We all know that if you just have one Wi-Fi router in your house, even if it's covered in antennas and has great promises about range, there's still always like a dead zone or a slow area in your house.
Marco:
What you need is a distributed system.
Marco:
This is what offices and schools and everything have been using forever, but normally it's been very hard to set up and very expensive.
Marco:
Eero gives you enterprise-grade Wi-Fi with a distributed system that you can set up easily in your home in just a few minutes with the Eero app for iOS and Android.
Marco:
It is beautiful.
Marco:
It's easy to use.
Marco:
And Eero has all the features you need.
Marco:
You have state-of-the-art encryption.
Marco:
You have guest networks.
Marco:
There's all sorts of wonderful things with Eero.
Marco:
And the actual units, they are these little white boxes.
Marco:
The first kind plugs into your internet connection, whether it's your cable modem or whatever.
Marco:
And then you can plug in the Eero beacon, which is their little satellite receivers.
Marco:
And these just look kind of like big nightlights.
Marco:
And in fact, they actually even include nightlights.
Marco:
They shoot at the bottom.
Marco:
And if you don't want that, you can turn it off, but it's pretty cool.
Marco:
And they sit flush against the outlet.
Marco:
And so you have the regular base station, and then you can put the beacons wherever you want.
Marco:
So usually, typically for most U.S.
Marco:
houses, you get two beacons and one base station.
Marco:
And this covers everything.
Marco:
And the app helps you place them.
Marco:
You can test their speeds and everything.
Marco:
But when you have Wi-Fi being broadcast from three different places in your house, it covers so much better and for so much further and so much more consistent.
Marco:
If you need any help, they have great customer support to walk you through things.
Marco:
But I bet you won't because it's so easy.
Marco:
For free overnight shipping to the U.S.
Marco:
or Canada, visit Eero.com and at checkout, select overnight shipping and enter promo code ATP to make it free.
Marco:
Once again, Eero.com and free overnight shipping to U.S.
Marco:
and Canada with code ATP.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Eero for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
All right, let's do some Ask ATP.
John:
Don't try to skip my thing.
Casey:
We're skipping your thing.
John:
No, it'll take two seconds because you'll never do it otherwise.
John:
It's two seconds.
Casey:
Everyone look at your timestamps.
Casey:
Look at the clock right now.
Casey:
Two seconds, John says.
John:
You've taken longer in your warning than I will.
Casey:
Okay, go ahead.
John:
And you still have to introduce it.
John:
I got to get my tab open.
Casey:
Look at this.
Casey:
Oh, I see how it is.
Casey:
I'm sorry.
Casey:
Sorry, Your Majesty.
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So, Guy Rambeau, who is one of the people who has done a really incredible job of figuring out what's going on within Apple based on firmware releases and things of that nature.
Casey:
He's also the host of a new podcast, which I've been enjoying, called Stacktrace.com.
Casey:
um he had found a few days ago now that there's a way to build webkit in such a way that you can get a dark appearance for webkit which is effectively for the purposes of this conversation safari so there is a apparently a dark mode and a you know not so dark mode that you which is the normal mode that you can find and engage if you know what you're doing
Casey:
So with that in mind, does that mean that there's going to be like a full macOS dark mode rather than just the ridiculous looking menu bar that nobody should ever use?
John:
Or an iOS dark mode.
John:
I mean, the reason I found this interesting and worth note is that Apple did last release or released two ago, the dark menu bar option on macOS.
Marco:
It's been there a long time, hasn't it?
Marco:
It's been a while.
John:
Yeah, I mean, I'm always surprised when I see people use that, just like I'm surprised when I see people still rocking the graphite appearance in macOS.
John:
But anyway, but they didn't do like a whole OS dark mode.
John:
They did, oh, you can have a dark menu bar, you can hide the menu bar, you can have a dark dock, but it's not like everything goes dark.
John:
And so this is just WebKit.
John:
So it could be this is just the next stage in the darkening of Apple's OS is that you can have a dark menu bar and a dark dock.
John:
And also, if you enable this mode,
John:
the quote unquote native controls inside your WebKit views also have a dark appearance.
John:
And we'll put a link in the show notes to two tweets showing the comparison of like, here's what it would look like with dark mode off and here's what it would look like with dark mode on.
John:
And WebKit, of course, is not just on the Mac.
John:
It's also on iOS.
John:
So I just think it's interesting that I was thinking of this in the context of the pro work group people.
John:
Like one of the comments that those people might have added is, hey, I'm working in a dark editing bay all day.
John:
And when I switch out of Final Cut,
John:
to the finder or something i'm blinded by the giant completely 100 white windows uh on my desktop glaring out at me and so it'd be great if i had an overall dark mode just for everything by default so i didn't have this you know unintentional hdr experience of being blinded by my screen or maybe the same thing for ipads if you're reading you know the web uh at night on an ipad or something i don't know it falls apart with web pages because they get to control the colors of the background but anyway
John:
I thought it was an interesting and a potentially pro angle on everything being dark, and it would be a good match to the outside of Apple's computers, which, as Marco noted on Twitter the other day, also tend to be going in the dark direction.
John:
He's got a dark iMac Pro, and you were commenting that every single MacBook Pro you've seen has been space gray, despite the fact that it's also offered in silver.
John:
So dark things are cool, and maybe there are more of them coming to Apple screens near you someday.
Casey:
That was relatively quick, I will concede.
Marco:
It was, however, longer than your introduction of the topic.
Casey:
Thank you, Marco.
Casey:
Why can't 32-bit apps run on a 64-bit OS?
Casey:
I can understand the reverse, 64 not working on 32, but why not, for example, why is it that Apple must phase out support for 32-bit apps on macOS?
Casey:
John?
John:
I think, yeah, combine these questions because they're both kind of asking the same thing.
John:
Like, what's the point?
John:
We've been talking about this as if it's an inevitability that, of course, 64-bit comes and 32-bit has to be dropped.
John:
Why?
John:
What the hell's the point?
Yeah.
John:
there is actually a point.
John:
Aside from the just like it makes things simpler, if you don't have to support both 32 and 64 bits, then you can make a CPU that only supports 64 and you use fewer transistors, you don't have to deal with 32, so on and so forth.
John:
But even setting all that aside, the most important aspect of 64-bit transition is...
John:
When you have the ability to run 32-bit and 64-bit apps, all the libraries and frameworks and parts of the OS that the applications use also have to come in 32-bit and 64-bit variants.
John:
So even if the entire operating system and all Apple's applications and all of your applications are 64-bit, you launch one 32-bit application, and it's got to bring in 32-bit versions of all the other libraries.
John:
And that's important because in modern OSs and iOS and Mac and everything...
John:
They use dynamic linking.
John:
And if you have 20 apps open that are all linked to the same system framework, you don't have 20 copies of that in memory.
John:
You have one copy of it in memory.
John:
That's important.
John:
So memory sharing is important.
John:
You'd run out of memory on your phone if that wasn't the case.
John:
As soon as you launch one 32-bit app, now you have two copies of that library in memory, the 64-bit version and the 32-bit version.
John:
So the only way you can ever get the big win of not having to have both versions of a whole bunch of libraries in memory because you've got some 64-bit and 32-bit applications, like because one 32-bit application will ruin it and pull in all of its libraries, is to expunge 32-bit from the system to say, we can't even run 32-bit.
John:
Our CPU can't run it, so our CPU can be smaller and take less power and have fewer transistors and be simpler and so on and so forth.
John:
And since we can't run it, we will never have both 64 and 32 bit copies of libraries and memory.
John:
So you save RAM, you save battery power, you make it simple.
John:
That's why it's kind of accepted as an inevitability that, yes, once you switch to 64 bit, eventually you should get rid of 32 bit.
John:
The timing we can all debate about, but the wins are real and technical.
John:
And that's why Apple's doing this.
Casey:
all right uh juho leo leonan must be uh finish anyway uh he writes what's oh god that's right oh you're so you're so it's such a rush to get to ask atp and look what's sitting there oh god this sucks you can move to the last question if you want no the next question is a wrangler question so forget it we're in the we're in that section of ask atp now
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So what is John's opinion on Destiny 2 and are you still playing it?
Casey:
There's been a lot of criticism of the downloadable content and microtransactions policies of the game.
Casey:
Do you think those are hurting the underlying game significantly?
Casey:
And Casey asks a follow on question.
Casey:
Can you please answer this question in English?
John:
it seems unlikely um i let's start with these stuff yes i am still playing destiny 2 this is this question says there's been a lot of criticism of the dlc and microtransaction but honestly the things that are wrong the most wrong with destiny 2 have nothing to do with microtransactions dlc is vague you're just saying like you don't like the expansions the expansions haven't been great but you know whatever the the core mechanics of the game are the things that have problems and
John:
I think I said this in one of the slacks recently.
John:
It's like, there's the game Destiny 2, and there's the second game that you get with Destiny 2, or not second game, the second entertainment product that you get with Destiny 2, which is participation in and observation of the development process of Destiny.
John:
This happened with Destiny 1 too, 1 as well, where...
John:
It was almost like for three years, you got to play a game, but you also got to see the development of the game in real time with constant feedback and animosity between the people who play the game and the people who make the game and various ups and downs.
John:
And that's my memories of Destiny 1.
John:
My good memories of Destiny 1 are very much tied up in...
John:
that interaction between the player base and the ongoing development of the game.
John:
It's not like they released the game and you just play it for three years.
John:
The game changed a lot in those three years, and it changed in response to and sometimes in opposition to the wishes of the player base.
John:
That continues to happen with Destiny 2.
John:
It's more frustrating because we feel like, didn't you learn anything for three years of Destiny 1?
John:
Don't you kind of know what people want?
John:
They made some bad guesses in the beginning of Destiny 2, and they're backpedaling on a lot of them, and that can be frustrating.
John:
But I have to admit, I am kind of enjoying seeing
John:
the game evolved just like destiny one did even though it's kind of dumb that they seem to have forgotten everything and made some bad bets in destiny too it's also bad that the player base seems to have dropped off a lot because people aren't willing to put up with this crap because they're kind of frustrated like again didn't you learn anything from destiny one so i am still playing it i do have hope that it will get better it has gotten better from launch till now uh and i still like it and i still go back to it when i'm not playing some other game
Casey:
Mike asks, in order for me to get back at John,
Casey:
if I could sell the bikes and buy a Wrangler.
Casey:
So the question is, if you got a Wrangler, what would you be looking for?
Casey:
Conversely, if not a Wrangler and you had 10 to 15 to spend on a used vehicle as a weekend toy, maybe some kind of convertible, what would you look for?
Casey:
Hard top, soft top, dependability and ease of maintenance would be key for me.
Casey:
So I will start...
Casey:
If I was going to get a Wrangler, I would have to do the terrible thing of getting a Wrangler Unlimited, which is to say a four-door Wrangler, which is blasphemous.
Casey:
It is a terrible decision, but it's what I would have to do.
Casey:
I would get a soft top because hard tops are dumb, and I don't want to hear any arguments to the contrary.
Casey:
And I would probably get a Sahara.
Casey:
I would try to get a Rubicon, but they are really freaking expensive.
Casey:
That's basically how off-road capable and slash nice they are.
Casey:
I had, there are some off-road, um, facilities, roads, again, it's not really road.
Casey:
I suppose trails.
Casey:
That's what I'm looking for.
Casey:
Trails near ish to me.
Casey:
And I like to think that if I got a Wrangler, I would go off-roading from time to time and thus having something more than like the base model would be good, but I would basically get as much soft top six speed Wranglers I could afford.
Casey:
Um,
Casey:
If I wasn't going to get a Wrangler and I was going to get some other kind of used cars, a weekend toy, I think in the $10,000 to $15,000 range, I would either get a Mustang convertible, and I would never bring it to Cars and Coffee lest I murder somebody.
Casey:
I would either get a Mustang convertible, a V8 with a stick.
Casey:
Or I've always really loved S2000s, which would make John very happy, what with them being Hondas.
Casey:
However, they are quite old now and still worth a fair bit of money.
Casey:
So I don't know if I would want something quite that old, but they've always appealed to me.
John:
You won't fit in one.
John:
You're too big.
Casey:
No, I've driven one.
Casey:
I don't know if I drove it.
Casey:
Did I drive it?
Casey:
I thought I drove it.
John:
Your hair is too big.
Casey:
My hair is too big.
John:
Have you sat in one lately?
John:
They're really small.
Casey:
I haven't been in one since 10-ish years ago, but a little more than that.
Casey:
But at the time, I fit.
Casey:
So anyway, Marco, you haven't talked for a while.
Casey:
So tell me, what would you do if you were forced to buy a Wrangler?
Casey:
And yes, I know you're going to say not buy a Wrangler, but let's try to play by the rules.
Casey:
What would you do if you were going to buy a Wrangler?
Casey:
And or what would you do if you had to get a $15,000 used car for fun?
Marco:
I have never looked at or priced Wranglers, so I don't even know what my options are, except to say that I know I would, I too would opt for the four-door version.
Marco:
And I would want the, I know there's an option to get a hard top and also have the ability to swap it out for a soft top.
Marco:
I would get that option because I live somewhere with winter.
Casey:
That's true, except the hard top is exceedingly heavy even on a two-door Wrangler and very unwieldy because if you think about it, all the weight is in the back because that's where the glass is.
Casey:
So it is a royal pain in the hindquarters to do that swap.
Casey:
And that's why I would advise, even if you live somewhere with winter, I would still advise going soft top.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
Well, so what I would actually do, though, is take the option presented in the question to not get a Wrangler.
Marco:
And so the question was, you know, if you can get something for like basically $15,000 or under used, that would be fun on the weekends.
Marco:
That might also give you that, you know, that same kind of fun or a similar kind of fun as like, you know, having a convertible or something like that.
Marco:
And so for that criteria, I haven't actually looked that deeply into what's available, but I did a quick search before the show.
Marco:
So what I would go for, I would look at basically the small, relatively light, relatively sporty convertibles that...
Marco:
are popular enough to find used in that price range so that would be things like uh the obviously the mazda miata i think would be very high on the list um the miata is not incredibly fast but is pretty damn fun and they're popular and they're plentiful so they're easy to find and i did a quick search and there are plenty of them in this price range that look fairly reasonable
Marco:
I would also consider the Mini Cooper, not any of the crazy big four-door ones or anything.
Marco:
The only downside with Minis is that because they are BMWs, they are very expensive to maintain once they're out of warranty.
Marco:
So that's not great.
Really?
Marco:
but uh but otherwise getting even worse than bmw for maintenance we can go to a uh used cayman the only problem is the cayman's an expensive car so getting one used has to be pretty old you know like i was i was i found one uh that that's a 2008 that was just it was like 14 14 5 or something so it's like just under the price ceiling and it's 10 years old and it's a porsche so that's not going to be fun to maintain yeah
Casey:
Nope.
Casey:
I actually just drove a friend's Cayman a week or two ago.
Casey:
Very nice car.
Casey:
Very, very nice car.
Casey:
Really.
Casey:
His was a 2015, I believe.
Casey:
It's Cayman S. And it is an extremely nice car.
Casey:
Handles exceptionally well.
Casey:
Go figure.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
You could also do the Boxster, which is similar in many ways.
Marco:
It's...
Marco:
Also, you know, going to be very expensive for a very old one, basically.
Marco:
But, you know, it is possible to do.
Marco:
And then finally, I think one option I would very seriously consider is a BMW 1 Series.
Marco:
And, you know, for this price, first of all, you know, they're hard to find because they don't sell that many 1 Series's or didn't sell that many of them.
Marco:
The 2 Series is too new.
Marco:
You won't find any of them for $15,000, but the 1 Series was pretty nice, actually, and even the 128 or the 135 also is another option, but even the base model, the 128, is available and convertible, not that heavy, and it's nice and small.
Marco:
And they're pretty fun to drive.
Marco:
The 128 is not going to be as fast as the higher ones, but it's still pretty fun.
Marco:
And that can be had in this price range.
Marco:
And what I like about the 128 and the 1 Series and 2 Series in general, I'm a sedan person.
Marco:
I like sitting at sedan height.
Marco:
And with these, you are pretty much sitting at sedan height.
Marco:
With all the other cars that I've mentioned so far, you're basically sitting on the road.
Marco:
You're sitting very low.
Marco:
Your perspective is very low on the road.
Marco:
You're...
Marco:
not quite as easy for other vehicles to see you if they're higher up than you and they might merge into you so i would actually very seriously consider for this role a one series john i don't have to answer the wrangler thing do i i would never buy one of those you definitely have to answer the wrangler thing yeah i would get i would get a two-door soft top and i would treat it like a dune buggy and i would only use it on the beach
John:
that i'm okay with that answer actually yeah i would like never want to have it on a road and you would crack a smile yeah no it'd be fun like who it doesn't like a dune buggy i just don't want to drive it around all the time like on roads it's stupid uh stupid car um fun dune buggy maybe though um for a 1015k uh miata the only other thing i i might consider that that has been mentioned is the uh the what the hell the the frs the
John:
uh yeah yeah what a brz toyota beru it's ft86 now i believe but yes we're all saying the same thing i know that's not a convertible right but it's like it's a cheap fun sporty car it's cheap because it doesn't have a lot of power but it's like it's kind of a throwback type of thing um and that's like i don't want a mini cooper i don't even want the stupid fiat uh miata clone there's not many convertibles that i would like besides the miata obviously i would take a cayman if i could find one on in the right price range but
John:
So you may pay 14K for that Cayman, but it's not going to be in great shape.
John:
And as soon as something breaks, you're going to put another 5K into it before you can sneeze because doing anything to it requires a ridiculous amount of work.
John:
So that would be kind of, you know, squeezing in.
John:
So yeah, that's probably what I would do.
John:
Although, like, I have never actually owned a convertible, so I don't know how much I would really like them.
John:
I think I would treat it a lot like the dune buggy where it's just a fun thing to drive around.
John:
But if I had to go to a store or didn't live somewhere where it was sunny all the time, I would just say, can I get a car with the roof?
Casey:
Convertibles, by definition, have roofs.
Casey:
That's the convertible part.
John:
You know what I mean?
John:
That's what gets into the SLK with the automated hardtop.
John:
We talked about this in the window thing.
John:
If you keep your windows open and closed, in general, I mostly keep them closed.
John:
I don't want the wind blowing on me unless I'm doing that thing where it's like I just want to drive around in an open-air thing.
John:
Convertibles and things about roofs should go in summer places and beach places, and that's where they belong.
John:
In every place else, I just want an actual car.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Linode, Eero, and RxBar.
Marco:
And we'll see you next week.
John:
Now the show is over.
John:
They didn't even mean to begin.
John:
Because it was accidental.
John:
Oh, it was accidental.
John:
John didn't do any research.
John:
Marco and Casey wouldn't let him because it was accidental.
John:
It was accidental.
John:
And you can find the show notes at ATP.FM.
Marco:
And if you're into Twitter, you can follow them at C-A-S-E-Y-L-I-S-S.
Marco:
So that's Casey Liss, M-A-R-C-O-A-R-M-D-N-T-M-A-R-C-O-R-M-N-S-I-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-R-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A-C-U-S-A
Casey:
So long.
Casey:
So I have a continuing the neutral theme.
Casey:
I have a question for you, gentlemen.
Casey:
I was leaving Declan's preschool yesterday and the person in front of me came to a rolling stop and made a turn without his or her signal.
Casey:
So there's a stop sign where you're supposed to come to a complete stop and wait like three seconds or something like that.
Casey:
And this individual neither stopped nor used to turn signal.
Casey:
And I got wondering which one of those things is worse because on paper, I would say a rolling stop is worse because it's less safe, but,
Casey:
most people only do a rolling stop when you can see everyone around you and you know that it's safe but not using your signal i feel like everyone around me does that and it's really freaking annoying so i will probably say not using your signal is worse but marco what do you think rolling stop or not using your signal what's more offensive
Marco:
well i well hmm it really depends a lot on the context fair uh and oh and also uh a a rolling stop is one of two moving violations i've ever gotten it was in college we all make mistakes
Marco:
I don't, I mean, both of them are unsafe.
Marco:
Both of them, you know, can be very dangerous and can cause accidents or, you know, hitting pedestrians or something.
Marco:
So if you're forcing me to rank them, I mean, failing to signal for like a right turn versus a lane change.
Marco:
Like, are we, are we distinguishing here?
Marco:
Like signaling for any reason or just signaling for a turn?
Casey:
The context in this particular case was a person coming to a T in the road and they made a 90 degree right turn without a signal from a rolling stop.
Casey:
But I mean, I think to me, not using your signal is generally speaking, I find that to be deeply unsafe.
Casey:
And I think that that's considerably worse.
Marco:
Was it a capital T or a lowercase T?
Casey:
It was a capital T. Okay.
Marco:
And they were turning right?
Marco:
That's correct.
Marco:
Okay, so it affected nobody.
Casey:
Yeah, that's fair.
Casey:
It bothered me behind them, but yes, you're right.
Marco:
And so in this case, a right turn at a tee without a signal is not very harmful to anybody except your mood.
Marco:
And therefore, the rolling stop would be the more offensive move.
Casey:
All right, John.
John:
So without specific context, I know you have a specific context to this thing, but the question is, like, in general, what's worse?
John:
And I have to say, in general, I think the lack of signal is worse, mostly because if you... Rolling stops can be situational.
John:
Like, we all know about political stop signs, where there's a stop sign somewhere in your neighborhood where it makes no sense that there's a stop sign there, because it's barely even an intersection, and the visibility is 360 degrees for miles in every direction, and there's nobody ever there.
John:
And it's just ridiculous there's a stop sign there, but somehow someone got a stop sign put up there.
John:
And everybody rolls through it, right?
John:
Because there's just no reason to ever stop.
John:
But I think people do rolling stop situationally.
John:
If it's a busy intersection and it's a four-way stop, everyone's stopping 100% because you're getting into an accident if you don't.
John:
Without trying very hard...
John:
people situationally stop now maybe it's a better habit to just stop fully every single time but i don't know if there are any real experienced adult drivers who literally stop 100 every single time at every stoplight there are degrees of rolling stops like obviously you have to slow down to almost zero miles an hour but if your wheel never comes to a complete and total stop like you know it's easy in six shift cars look you have to shift back into first if i like i have to shift back into first i've stopped enough
John:
And remember, my cars have no power.
John:
My cars have no power, so I don't even have the option of starting in second gear like cars with actual power, right?
John:
So in general, it is better.
John:
The turn signal one, I think, is worse because my experience is people who don't signal, it spreads.
John:
Like, at first it's like, oh, I don't signal here because there's no cars around.
John:
No one needs to know that I'm signaling.
John:
But that habit sticks and they just stop signaling everywhere.
John:
It's not like rolling stops where it's situational and they just, you know, start doing it again when they need to.
John:
They just become non-signalers.
John:
We've all seen non-signalers.
John:
It doesn't matter what they're doing, turning left, turning right, changing lanes.
John:
It doesn't matter.
John:
They're just the signals don't even exist, right?
John:
And so that's why I think lack of signals is worse because it seems to spread and because people don't do it situationally.
John:
Now, if you give me any specific situation, it could be that...
John:
In that situation, I would rather have you stop fully than do a signal because a lot of times people think everything is clear.
John:
Even Marcus said, oh, capital T intersection, I'm making a right turn.
John:
No one's around.
John:
I don't want to harm it anyway.
John:
The reason they have you do a full stop at a capital T intersection when there's no cars for miles is because if there's a crosswalk, you're supposed to stop to check the crosswalk for some kid who's about to run out.
John:
So when you do a rolling stop there, if you're rolling too much, you're running over a kid who you didn't see because they weren't on the road.
John:
There's no cars anyway.
John:
I can just make a right turn here and then you just run a kid over.
John:
That's why you're supposed to stop.
John:
At stop signs, even when it seems there's nobody anywhere.
John:
So it really is situational when rolling stop is good.
John:
But I think, like I said, in general, the lack of turn signal seems viral, whereas rolling stops seems situational.
Marco:
And I feel like that actually plays into the ranking here.
Marco:
Like, experienced drivers know that you can't trust somebody's lack of turn signaling to mean they're not going to turn.
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
Because turn signals are so unreliable as a signal, people could signal left and turn right.
Marco:
People could not signal and turn all over the place or stop in the middle of the road.
Marco:
So we know as seasoned drivers, we know that turn signals are not reliable as a source of prediction.
Marco:
Whereas...
Marco:
I think most of us assume that if there's a stop sign, almost everyone is going to stop or at least come very, very close to stopping.
Marco:
So if it's... Anyway, there's degrees of rolling stops.
Marco:
You know, if you're really... You know, if you're not going into first gear territory, that's a fine line between... That's not a rolling stop.
John:
That's just blowing a stop sign.
John:
That's just blowing a stop sign.
John:
I value the distinction of, like, a rolling stop is you didn't come to 100% stop, but if... Like, the cop might not even have given you a ticket because, yeah, you did, but, like, blowing a stop sign is like, oh, you just pretend the stop sign's not there.
John:
That's different than
John:
what we're talking about.
Marco:
Also, in the situation at the T, if you come up to the capital T, you are turning.
Marco:
So whether you're signaling or not, everyone knows you're going to make a turn.
Marco:
And if you happen to be turning right, that's why I said there's really no harm done.
Marco:
You are right.
Marco:
If you hit somebody in the crosswalk, that's a pretty big problem.
Marco:
But I...
Marco:
I wasn't aware that was one of the factors here.
John:
It's the thing people think.
John:
There are no cars anywhere around and no one is in the road.
John:
Therefore, it's safe for me to roll through this thing and make it right.
John:
And the place that you're not looking is the sidewalk.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
And I agree that the rolling stop is the more... That's what I'm saying.
Marco:
The rolling stop is the more dangerous thing.
Marco:
First of all, because of a situation like that.
Marco:
Second of all, because...
Marco:
I think more people will assume that you're going to stop at the stop sign than will assume that you're not going to turn if you happen to not be signaling right now.
John:
I think signaling, I don't want to throw more like, you know, this state is better than that state, but I really do find it changes a lot based on geography.
John:
Because I think for the most part, for all of the bad Massachusetts driver or Boston driver things, and there are bad Boston drivers, signaling is pretty consistent around here, whereas other states that I've driven in, signaling seems almost non-existent, and I'm shocked by it every time.
Casey:
Yeah, Virginia is not great about this.
Casey:
And Virginia is particularly bad about running red lights, which is so dangerous.
Casey:
I don't understand what the issue is here.
Casey:
And I've been I've lived in Virginia basically since college, you know, with a couple of with a short stint back in Connecticut.
Casey:
But for 18 years, I've been here and I don't understand how and why so many people run so many red lights so regularly.
Casey:
It drives me bananas.
Casey:
I don't get it.
Marco:
Do you guys have the Pittsburgh left at lights?
Marco:
The what?
Marco:
So you're at a road, you're at a stoplight.
Marco:
The opposing traffic that's going, you know, the opposite direction is you, that's currently stopped.
Marco:
The first car in that line wishes to make a left turn.
Marco:
The light turns green for both of you.
Marco:
That first car jumps the gun and turns left right in front of you.
Casey:
Oh, no.
Marco:
That's not the Pittsburgh left.
Marco:
That's like every state in the Northeast left.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
And so basically, if you, as the person going straight, floor it, when the light turns green, you will hit them.
Marco:
they just kind of do it because they figure like, you're probably not going to hit me.
Marco:
So I'm just going to gun it and go for it.
Marco:
Um, so this was, this was the thing that I learned in Pittsburgh that everyone there called the Pittsburgh left, but yeah, John, you're right.
Marco:
Everyone in New York does it too.
Marco:
Uh, but only in certain suburbs.
Marco:
It's like, it is kind of like micro regional around here.
Marco:
Um,
Marco:
I hate that.
Marco:
That is my pet peeve.
Marco:
If somebody does a Pittsburgh left in front of me, I will hold down the horn and almost hit them because I'm trying to make a point that that's not okay.
Marco:
That drives me nuts.
Marco:
And sometimes I will... If I know that I can beat them...
Marco:
I will just floor it and just cut them off so they can't make the left.
Marco:
You're going to get into an accident.
John:
That's not defensive driving.
John:
That's the opposite of defensive driving.
Casey:
That is absolutely accurate.
Casey:
However, what on the road can you not beat?
Casey:
I mean, there are very few cars, especially that you would see in a regular occurrence.
John:
The reason people do it is based on attention.
John:
If he's not paying attention, he's looking at his phone, right?
John:
Right.
John:
that the light has been green for a while the person makes the left is like that guy's not apparently not going and here's the great thing massachusetts has this great thing called delayed green where their intersections still probably some of them around where uh the light turns green for you but you have no idea that the the oncoming traffic in the opposite direction does not yet have a green light that you get a green light for a full five or six seconds before they do it's for you to make a left turn there is no indication in the intersection you don't get an arrow there's no signs you just have to know oh everyone knows that this intersection is delayed green
John:
and so that's that's to drain the there's no left turn lane it's to drain the left turners before they come so if you don't know that and you're afraid to make a pittsburgh left now you're gonna have a bunch of angry people honking at you saying what are you waiting for turn left because otherwise you'd be holding up the whole line the single line of traffic delayed green is fun