Observing a Black Hole
Casey:
Well, how about let me bring it back together then.
Casey:
What would you buy if not a Tesla?
Casey:
I feel like we might have covered this at one point, but what's sitting here today, what would you buy?
Marco:
Hold on.
Marco:
Tim just brought me a plate of freshly baked cookies and wants me to taste test to see which one is better.
Marco:
I love my life.
John:
Important business is happening here.
John:
Top four cookies that Tiff just brought you.
John:
There's only two.
John:
That doesn't matter.
John:
I think we spotted the problem.
John:
You need two more cookies.
John:
I have to take a picture of this.
John:
You rank them.
John:
The cookies that are still in the kitchen will be your honorable mentions.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
This does not by any means have to make it in the show, but Espresso had an interesting question in the chat.
Casey:
What do you think the best server-side language would be?
Casey:
Use Windows and .NET for ease of deployment and all that, or try and pursue Swift?
Casey:
I can tell you with some confidence, perhaps a lot of confidence, that Swift on the server is not a good idea because it is not ready.
Casey:
But with regard to what one should do, there's so many great answers to that question.
John:
Neither of which is Swift or .NET.
Casey:
I'm not so sure .NET is not the right answer.
Casey:
.NET is not the right answer.
Casey:
No, just hold on.
Casey:
A couple of years ago, it was absolutely not the right answer.
Casey:
And I'm out of the game, to be clear.
Casey:
I haven't written any .NET code in at least a year, maybe two now.
Marco:
.NET is such not the right answer that it fired you from web development.
Casey:
No, that was SharePoint more than anything else.
Marco:
You ran screaming into mobile development.
Casey:
That's ish true.
Casey:
So what I hated about .NET was really all the things around it.
Casey:
So Visual Studio was pretty good.
Casey:
It's ugly.
Casey:
It's not as ugly as Android Studio or any of the equivalents in all the Eclipse-based IDEs, but it's still ugly.
Casey:
But it's Windows that drove me away from Windows and the whole IIS pipeline or information servers, basically the web server.
Casey:
All that just drove me nuts, and I didn't want it.
Casey:
But they now have .NET Core, which is new since... I think it was starting to be developed or was just coming out when I left this world.
Casey:
And .NET Core is a subset of .NET that will run on pretty much anything.
Casey:
And I actually think that...
Casey:
could be a reasonable answer i'm not saying it's the best answer i'm just saying it could be a reasonable answer because you can have all the good parts of dot net and c sharp which c sharp is a great language it has its warts like every other language but it's a great language uh but but it's the the rest of the the ecosystem that's garbage and so if you can eschew the rest of the ecosystem then you're in pretty good shape
Casey:
But, I mean, I think that it's really, obviously, it depends on what you're trying to build and what its purpose is and what your team or you know.
Casey:
But, I mean, I could make a decent argument for PHP, maybe even an ancient-ass language from the Stone Age like Pearl, depending on what you were trying to do.
Casey:
So there is no good answer.
John:
But I think doing anything...
John:
on the web using windows or any windows adjacent technology as your back end is like the path of most resistance like don't don't do that using using open technology whether it's php or ruby or python that's what dotnet core is yeah i know but then you then you're losing all the other stuff you're losing all the stuff that you liked about oh i get to use fancy windows ide that knows how to do all this stuff uh and
John:
I asked like deploying, having that be your deployment target instead of like the bazillion deployment targets for all the different other languages.
John:
It's just better to go with something completely open, open source, and much more popular on the server than anything Windows related.
Casey:
I don't think it's as bad as you say.
Casey:
But I also don't think you're wrong either.
Casey:
I think .NET is a more reasonable answer than you're giving you credit for.
Casey:
But I agree with you that the other answers you're giving are probably better answers.
John:
Just look at the biggest companies out there doing things on the web.
John:
How are they doing them?
John:
What are they hosting on?
John:
What kind of language and technology stacks are they using?
John:
And Windows stuff is still in the minority.
John:
Not as big a minority as Swift, which I assume nobody's using, probably not even Apple, but, you know, of the ones that are existing and fairly well-established.
Marco:
Yeah, the problem with Swift in the server is that it violates a number of my best practices for server-side languages, one of which is they should be old and boring.
Marco:
But another one is that you should never have any risk of being the largest installation of it.
Marco:
And I feel like if I ran... Suppose I converted all of Overcast website over to Swift.
Marco:
That might be the biggest Swift server-side installation.
Marco:
It probably isn't, but it might be.
Marco:
And therefore...
Marco:
I would run a major risk of running into bugs and limitations and scaling problems that no one else is running into or that too few people are running into where that could make it hard to get past them.
Marco:
Or it might make things become my problem that shouldn't be my problem.
Marco:
And that's not a recipe for happiness when you're running server-side stuff.
John:
Also, if you get into server-side stuff and you end up learning of the Windows stack or the .NET stack, even if you learn the cool open source one, job prospect-wise, you're going to be doing the stuff that you were doing, Casey, which is working on people's crappy intranets or whatever.
Casey:
That's a good point.
Casey:
Again, you're not...
Casey:
Without question, you are not wrong, but it is not as guaranteed as you're painting it to be.
Casey:
Like, for example, at work, we were straight up Windows.NET the whole way for the server-side APIs, and then we had PHP on the front end, which was weird.
Casey:
PHP isn't really a front-end language, but we were basically using PHP to consume .NET APIs.
Casey:
It's weird.
Casey:
But anyway, I bring all this up to say that we have actually started moving everything away from Windows and onto .NET Core so we can deploy...
Casey:
to any, you know, within reason, any Linux-based server setup.
Casey:
And to be fair, I'm speaking a little bit, more than a little bit, out of my comfort zone at this point because I'm out of that world now.
Casey:
But, you know, I wanted to point out that CAM25 is kind of lighting me up in the chat room in a nice way and saying, you know, Vapor, which is one of the Swift server-side things, is really good, which very well may be.
Casey:
And they said, you know, me saying C Sharp is better than Swift...
Casey:
It says Cam 25.
Casey:
That's only true because Swift is so new and people are being scared to adopt.
Casey:
And that's exactly why you don't want to be.
Casey:
This is what Marco was just saying.
Casey:
Like, you do not want to be on the bleeding edge on server side stuff.
Casey:
And I'm not I'm not doubting that vapor is very good and is probably going to be very, very, very good in the future.
Casey:
But you do not want to be the tip of the spear or one of my favorite Clarkson lines of all time.
Casey:
You do not want to be the prowl of the good ship progress when it comes to these sorts of things.
Casey:
As Marco said, you want to be on the boring old technologies that everyone's been using for a long, long time.
Casey:
Anyway, I guess this is sort of kind of follow out.
Casey:
We wanted to call attention to and this is a pretty much annual occurrence.
Casey:
The App Camp for Girls fundraiser slash live near WWDC concert jam with James Dempsey and the Breakpoints.
Casey:
If you are not familiar with this, and we've talked about this in the past, James Dempsey is an ex-Apple employee and also a pretty talented musician.
Casey:
And he writes songs that are very catchy and very good, but the lyrics are all about writing code.
Casey:
And this sounds like it may not be enjoyable at all at first glance, but it's actually really, really, really good.
Casey:
And so ATP is one of many sponsors of the Live Near WWDC 2018 benefit concert for App Camp for Girls.
Casey:
Now, it's App Camp for Girls.
Casey:
We've talked about this many times in the past.
Casey:
It is a... I'd like a...
Casey:
Sort of tutoring camp sort of thing for girls and other underrepresented groups for especially in the like middle school age group.
Casey:
And we are all we have supported them.
Casey:
ATP supported them for a long time.
Casey:
Many of the members of our camp for girls are dear friends of ours, most especially Gene McDonald, who is one of their founders.
Casey:
They are an unbelievably good organization that has done tremendous things to push young girls and young women forward into STEM paths through life and teach them that they too can write code.
Casey:
And despite what all these jerky boys around them say, it's actually just as easy, if not easier, for a girl to write code as it is for a boy.
Casey:
And so if you are in the WWDC area next week on Wednesday, I strongly encourage you to come and hang out and say, hi, I'm pretty sure all three of us will be there for at least some amounts of time.
Casey:
If not the whole thing, you can buy tickets for $35, which are, which is a donation effectively to app camp for girls.
Casey:
There will be an open bar with I'm told top shelf liquor, which is very exciting.
Casey:
And even if you're not at WWDC,
Casey:
You know what?
Casey:
You can just donate.
Casey:
You can be a cool kid and just donate.
Casey:
I'm good with that.
Casey:
Marco and John are good with that.
Casey:
Just donate.
Casey:
That's awesome.
Casey:
So we just want to call that to your attention.
Casey:
We're trying to raise $25,000 for App Camp for Girls, and I could not say enough good things about that organization.
Casey:
So if you have the means, I strongly encourage you to throw a few bucks their way, whether or not you're going to be there.
Casey:
And if you are going to be there, it'll be great.
Casey:
That's all the follow-up, right?
Casey:
I didn't think it was, but I feel like all the other follow-up disappeared while I was talking.
Casey:
It didn't disappear.
Marco:
It was never there.
Marco:
Turns out Elon Musk and unions are not controversial at all.
Marco:
Okay.
John:
Moving on to... They actually weren't.
John:
We didn't actually get that much feedback on that.
John:
I didn't think we would, and we didn't.
John:
You know, like five people, but that's, you know, that's nothing.
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Eero.
Marco:
Finally, Wi-Fi that works.
Marco:
We all know by now that one router doesn't cover a lot of our houses all the way.
Marco:
There's always gaps or slow spots or dead zones.
Marco:
What you need is what businesses figured out a long time ago.
Marco:
You need a distributed Wi-Fi system that broadcasts from multiple physical points and they overlap and they make a nice big blanket mesh of fast even coverage.
Marco:
Now, business systems are really hard to use and pretty expensive.
Marco:
Eero brings this to everyone with a great value and with the easiest setup I've ever seen of a wireless router.
Marco:
So here's what you do.
Marco:
You start out with the base station and you plug this into your network connection just like any other router.
Marco:
Then you have the Eero beacons.
Marco:
These are additional little units that you can plug in at different points around your house, and they broadcast the Wi-Fi too.
Marco:
So they all work together, and they communicate with each other via a back-end mesh network so that it's all wireless.
Marco:
You don't have to run wires everywhere if you don't want to, if you can't.
Marco:
They all communicate with each other and they form this huge, even, fast blanket of Wi-Fi coverage across your entire home.
Marco:
You can use whatever number of the beacons you need.
Marco:
Most homes need about two beacons plus one base station.
Marco:
And these are all high-grade wireless gear, all the top radios, top speeds, everything you'd expect from a high-powered router.
Marco:
And it's all controlled via their app.
Marco:
And it is not only beautiful...
Marco:
But so easy to use.
Marco:
It is, again, the easiest setup I've ever seen of any Wi-Fi router.
Marco:
And it happens to have this incredible coverage area by using these beacons.
Marco:
And you can see for yourself.
Marco:
See the reviews.
Marco:
You'll see.
Marco:
It isn't just me saying this.
Marco:
The reviews speak to themselves.
Marco:
This is a very highly rated item.
Marco:
Look on Amazon.
Marco:
Look at all the review sites you'll see for yourself.
Marco:
So check out Eero.
Marco:
Go to Eero.com.
Marco:
And at checkout, you can select overnight shipping.
Marco:
And if you do, enter promo code ATP to make that shipping free to the U.S.
Marco:
or Canada.
Marco:
So once again, go to Eero.com.
Marco:
That's E-E-R-O.com.
Marco:
And for free overnight shipping to the U.S.
Marco:
or Canada, select overnight shipping at checkout and then enter promo code ATP to make it free.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Eero for sponsoring our show.
Casey:
iOS 11.4 is out, and I am happy to tell you the long national nightmare is over.
Casey:
AirPlay 2 and Messages in the Cloud are here.
Casey:
I have tried neither of these things, so I am useless.
Casey:
I have nothing constructive to add, really, other than to say I have seen people throwing up screenshots of their iCloud storage usage after engaging the
Casey:
messages in the cloud and seeing this seeing the messages line item at like 20 plus gigs and as someone who does not pay for extra icloud storage because i don't use um icloud photo library and i don't back up to you're on the free plan yeah
Marco:
You don't pay the dollar a month?
John:
What do I need it for?
John:
Oh, my God.
John:
Who buys batteries?
Casey:
Yeah, who buys batteries?
John:
I say that every time.
John:
Yes, I am going to make that same joke every time someone doesn't pay for Cloud Store.
Marco:
You're a power user.
Marco:
This makes a big difference in how your device functions.
Marco:
How?
Casey:
What?
Casey:
How?
Casey:
In what way?
Casey:
What does that buy me up until this?
John:
You do your iCloud backup, so you have a cloud backup of all your stuff.
Casey:
Yeah, but why would I need that when I have it on my computer?
John:
So you have it in one more place.
John:
You also do it on your computer.
John:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
John:
Why do you need any backups?
Marco:
They're just copies of what you already have.
Marco:
It's useless.
Casey:
Why bother?
Marco:
It's so redundant.
Marco:
Why make another copy?
Casey:
What's the point?
Marco:
Oh, my God.
Marco:
Casey.
Casey:
I've never felt like I've had the need.
Casey:
And I'm not saying I wouldn't get use out of it, but I've never felt like I had the need.
Casey:
But now this is the moment when I'm probably going to have the need because I would like to do messages in the cloud, I think.
Casey:
And it is clearly going to require me to spring for some amount of iCloud storage.
Casey:
Or maybe I'll just play the slow and lazy procrastinators game.
Casey:
Hello, Marco.
Casey:
And maybe at WWDC next week, I will get some more free storage.
Casey:
And that would be lovely.
Marco:
Who wants to bet against that?
Marco:
I will.
Casey:
I do.
Casey:
I do as well.
Casey:
But all kidding aside.
John:
I mean, you still won't have enough.
John:
You should just pay for it just so you can back up all your devices.
John:
Forget about the messages in the cloud thing.
John:
Just so you can back up your devices.
Casey:
i mean no real argument here but either way uh i have not tried any of these things and john did you get a home pod i don't recall because mark when i do not have them i do i have a home pod okay so have you tried airplay 2 how would i go about doing that
John:
What do you mean?
John:
I don't know.
John:
I'm asking you an honest question.
John:
I have no idea.
Marco:
I believe under iOS 11.4, if you AirPlay to a HomePod or I think an Apple TV, the app model or Forward, that should, I think, automatically use AirPlay 2.
Marco:
Except if you're streaming Overcast, which is part of the reason why I now had to go buy a f***ing HomePod.
John:
Well, you really should have bought two of them.
John:
That's true, actually.
John:
I actually did buy two of them.
John:
Yeah, that's what I'm saying.
John:
That's the whole point.
John:
The features that it gives, multi-device audio and stereo pairing, I can't use with my single HomePod.
John:
So if I did AirPlay 2 to it, I'd be like, great, it sounds just like it did before because music is going over the air.
John:
I suppose I might notice less lag in the controls, but other than that, it never even occurred to me to try it because I just have the one HomePod.
Casey:
Tell me you bought white ones.
Casey:
Please tell me you bought white ones.
Marco:
They happen to be white.
Casey:
They're not white.
Marco:
They're like grayish.
Casey:
This is the best time of my life.
Casey:
This is fantastic.
Casey:
Did you play any Dave Matthews on them by chance?
Marco:
No.
Marco:
Only Weezer in the long winter so far.
Casey:
Oh, my word.
Casey:
Okay, so how do they sound?
Marco:
It was just today.
Marco:
The second one I haven't hooked up yet.
Marco:
It was literally tonight that I finally got to hook it up.
Casey:
Do they sound good, or does it sound good?
Marco:
It sounds good, yeah.
Marco:
It doesn't sound as mind-blowing as people have said.
Marco:
I honestly expected it to sound a little bit better than it does, but it does sound way better than the Amazon Echo, and for the size, it sounds good.
Marco:
They are certainly doing a whole lot
Marco:
of bass, especially at lower volumes where you're less likely to notice.
Marco:
I think the bass is dynamic by volume level.
Marco:
Bose has done this for a long time, where basically at lower volumes, you use more bass than at higher volumes, and it makes lower volumes sound better to most people, but without having the bass be too boomy and overpowering when you turn it up.
Marco:
I think that's what they're doing on it.
Marco:
Anyway...
Marco:
It sounds pretty good for its size, but this is nothing new.
Marco:
I got it because I have to finally... Basically, I was kind of gambling like AirPlay 2 seemed like it was maybe never going to come or going to come later this year, and so I thought I had time to move my audio engine to it, and I was going to just keep doing other things until it was clear that it was going to actually happen.
Marco:
Well, it actually happened, so now I have to test it.
Marco:
And I'm going to be traveling a lot back and forth to the beach this summer, so I bought one for there and one for here.
Marco:
So I can actually test it, and I have a feeling it's going to be a pretty big chunk of my summer work.
Casey:
We should note, though, and make it plain, that these things, Airplay 2 and Messages in the Cloud, they were both debuted or teased at WWDC 2017.
John:
They were announced, not teased.
John:
They were announced.
Casey:
Fair, fair.
Casey:
And it is now less than a week away from the keynote that kicks off WWDC 2018.
Casey:
And just in the nick of time, just by the skin of their teeth, they have gotten this in time.
Casey:
And it makes me wonder, is it that this is really and truly fully baked and it was a happy coincidence?
Casey:
Or is this getting shipped a little sooner than they want just so they can check the before 2018 checkbox?
John:
Well, something clearly went wrong here.
John:
I hope people who have access to press that have access to Apple during WWC week ask this.
John:
Not that it's, you know, like some deep deadly secret, but I feel like if it's a year since when you announce something and when you release it, something has gone wrong and it's worth some kind of answer.
John:
Hey, what went wrong?
John:
apple's just probably going to say it took longer than we thought but i feel like it is something that needs it's a question that needs to be asked and answered we can't just pretend like oh just sometimes this happens they announce something and it doesn't come out for a year because then like what's the point of announcements anymore this this wasn't like a preview or a sneak peek or a thing that we might be working on it was like here are these things and some things are available now and some things will be all two weeks from now some will be available a little bit later and a little bit later turns out to be a year that's no good no good
Marco:
Honestly, I haven't turned the feature on yet, even though I do pay for storage, Casey, because I'm a little scared to be one of the very first people to turn this on.
Marco:
I think it's very telling that Apple has not enabled this for the Mac yet and has not enabled it by default on iOS and has kind of buried the setting.
Marco:
It kind of looks like, I don't know, maybe they're not that confident in it yet.
John:
I don't know if that's the reason.
John:
I did enable it just because one of the features I was most excited about last year.
John:
And I'm like, fine, I'll wait for a delay.
John:
I'd rather have it work than not work.
John:
And it was like sort of half released in betas a couple times, then pulled back.
John:
I'm like, well, whatever.
John:
They'll get it worked out.
John:
But at this point, I'm like, look, you've had a year.
John:
This thing better work.
John:
I'm enabling it.
John:
So I enabled it.
John:
It was buried.
John:
I was thinking of why it doesn't appear to be enabled by default.
John:
It's hard to tell because I know I did probably...
John:
did i play with it during the betas i don't remember it was so long ago it's the problem for waiting a year um but it you know people have a surprising amount of data in their messages right so if they enable it by default it would blow everybody's free five gigabytes just like casey right because you may you know you may not have a lot of cloud storage and other stuff you might have hanging around like the photos don't count towards it or whatever i think right or i don't know i can keep track of what uh or maybe music doesn't count towards it but photos do anyway um
John:
check you can check if you go into you know settings on your uh on your phone and then go into icloud and then look at uh go to manage storage and then look at the messages row and and you may not think you have a lot of messages like that's just text messages how big could it possibly be but you send video to people people send you stupid multi megabyte gifs that are probably mpeg 4 if you're looking stupid you know
John:
GIFs are so incredibly massive.
John:
He said people, not you.
John:
If you actually get a legit GIF, I don't even know if this is possible.
John:
Is it possible to get an actual GIF in messages or does it back-end convert them all to MP4s like Twitter does?
Casey:
No, they're actual GIFs.
Casey:
I shouldn't say this with such extreme confidence.
Casey:
I am fairly sure that they are not converted.
Casey:
Because if you save that from your messages app, it's being saved as a GIF.
Casey:
It's not being saved as an MP4.
John:
GIF animations are not space efficient, let's just say.
John:
Despite the fact that they're still delightful.
John:
Anyway, so my messages, it says 4.6 gigabytes.
John:
And because I pay for tons of storage, it's not a big deal.
John:
So I enabled it.
John:
It's not... The new version of Mac OS is not out yet.
John:
What is it going to be?
John:
10, 13, 15 or something is going to have it enabled.
John:
And we're on 14 now.
John:
Something like that.
John:
So that'll probably be out in a couple days.
John:
I've only enabled it on one device because it's the only device I've upgraded.
John:
And when I tap on messages, it says 4.6 gigabytes.
John:
When I tap on messages...
John:
Oh, fine, fine.
John:
Now you're going to tell me.
John:
It has a little thing that says conversations, and it says 2.18 gigabytes.
John:
All day, it has said conversations, zero kilobytes, despite the fact that the thing I just tapped on said 4.6 gigabytes.
John:
So anyway, now when I go in 4.6 gigabytes, I go in, it says conversations, 2.18 gigabytes.
John:
Then I go into the next screen, and my top conversation is negative one byte, and my second conversation is negative six bytes.
John:
Nice.
John:
And they're sorted, but you're right.
John:
So...
John:
something is a little bit wacky with their calculations of exactly how much storage things are staying up because i'm pretty sure i have no conversations that are negative bytes in size um so it hasn't destroyed my messages everything all my conversations on my phone i continue to see there but i have also not using the actual feature yet which is so your messages should be the same on all your devices in theory if you go into your mac it should be the same you go into your ipad it should be the same
John:
I will try that out as I upgrade my devices.
John:
Of course, I can't upgrade my Mac, so I'll never really see it here, but I'll see it on my wife's 5K iMac.
John:
So, yeah, I'm taking a bullet on this one.
John:
I'm like, look, you had a year.
John:
I really want this feature.
John:
It better work.
John:
So I enabled it.
Casey:
Yeah, I am not that.
Casey:
But leaving aside the iCloud storage issues, which are self-created, I am not bold enough to do this quite yet.
Casey:
And I don't think I will be until after I'm back from WWDC, because even though I do have some issues with iMessage from time to time, like messages coming out of order and so on, I don't want to mess with any of that until I'm back from WWDC, just to make sure everything's kosher.
John:
I think the main reason to enable this, you're like, I never had these bugs.
John:
Why would I enable this feature if you're saying that this feature might be itself buggy?
John:
I never have the problems that it's supposedly solving.
John:
I think it's mostly for the same reason you would have any kind of iCloud integration.
John:
You'd want some kind of iCloud integration.
John:
It's
John:
uh another backstop against losing stuff so maybe there's some conversations that you have that you know have sentimental value or you have tons of videos and images or whatever and that you may be schlepping them along from device to device but don't really have a good cloud backup of it for whatever reason casey
John:
this will give you a cloud backup of all your conversations, or it will destroy your conversations.
John:
This is the deal we make with these cloud things.
John:
Like, this scary feature could just, like, everything's been fine on my phone, you know, but in theory, if everything works well, you will now have all your conversations in more places than you used to, especially if, I think, like most of us, you have some conversations that are on your phone but aren't on your iPad or are on your Mac but aren't on your phone but aren't, you know, like...
John:
it's not the same everywhere this in theory will make it the same everywhere and will also make sure that that sameness is also stored on apple server somewhere that's the way it's supposed to work that's the way i hope it works and it'll also make your messages go in order uh so i'll let you know if it destroyed i don't have any particularly sentimental uh
John:
iMessage conversations given how long it was before i even got an iphone um and if i if i did messages on ipod touch i don't even remember so uh i was using aim all my sentimental conversations are on aim or maybe some on icq but i don't even remember my number anymore um 120570 what's up
John:
Yeah.
John:
I don't even know if I have my ICQ number in email anymore.
John:
I probably could dig it up in an email archive, but it's all lost.
John:
Of course it's all lost.
John:
All those why talk conversations, all gone.
Marco:
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Casey:
so wbc is coming i don't know how we want to dig in on this i don't have any particular format because we're not as clever as upgrade with their draft and all that nonsense which i adore isn't it frustrating how clever they are with stuff like that so annoying so annoying get jason on the podcast you know there'll be a draft that's how it works
John:
get me on a podcast you know there'll be follow-up and you get jason on a podcast there will be drafts that is a light there's neither follow-up nor draft on robot or not that's true the whole show is follow-up that's my secret casey it's all follow-up reference acknowledged reference acknowledged
Casey:
All right.
Casey:
So how do we want to start this?
Casey:
Do we want to just start spitballing things we're excited for, hopeful for?
Casey:
I mean, I guess... I have an opening statement.
Marco:
Oh, sure.
Marco:
Please.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So I'm excited about this because we really know almost nothing going into it.
Marco:
As of this recording,
Marco:
that was gonna be my that's gonna be my opening statement too like as of this recording we know almost nothing we have no real credible rumors we have no hardware parts leaks or anything like that we really have no idea what we're getting and maybe that'll change over the next few days like a lot of times like on monday morning stuff will leak but for the most part i you know we really don't know anything and that's that's
Marco:
Kind of concerning on some levels, but mostly just very exciting that this will actually be full of surprises for us.
Marco:
For me, the big thing I'm looking for, and like on Connected this week, they were talking about how rather than kind of predictions, they were basically making a list of what would make them happy.
Marco:
What would make me happy is when I look at Apple today, I see a company that's mostly doing pretty well, has a bunch of stuff that's mostly pretty good.
Marco:
There are a couple of problem areas.
Marco:
I think the major problem areas to me are the Mac and Siri.
Marco:
And it's not that they suck or are broken, but it's... And the Kate Wells Siri kind of does.
Marco:
But, yeah, so Siri needs a lot of help.
Marco:
The Mac...
Marco:
It's hard to tell with the Mac whether they are just neglecting it horribly or whether there is some big new direction that it will be taking that just isn't ready yet.
Marco:
You know, this is always a problem when looking at Apple.
Marco:
And with Siri, you can kind of say the same thing maybe to some level.
Marco:
Like, maybe Siri is as bad as it is because they're working on a better Siri that hasn't launched yet.
Marco:
Who knows, right?
Marco:
Yeah.
Marco:
So what I want to see this year, all we've seen from the few little trickles of rumors that we've gotten are people saying that, oh, big stuff's in the work for the Mac with various cross-platform slash new UI framework kind of things, and other people saying, no, it's not, or mostly saying it's not ready yet, and maybe it'll be ready next year.
Marco:
What I want to see this year...
Marco:
is some kind of indication of this kind of major motion in the Mac and in Siri.
Marco:
I want to see some kind of indication that these aren't just sucking like they are sucking now forever.
Marco:
That Mac OS and that Siri...
Marco:
even if their major upgrades are coming next year, I want to see a sign of life this year that they will have major upgrades.
Marco:
And if their major upgrades are ready, that's even better, but it sounds like they're probably not.
Marco:
So I just want to see a sign of life that the lull that we're seeing in these two major problem areas right now is not because they're just being elected forever, but because bigger stuff is coming, but it just isn't ready yet.
Marco:
That's what I want to see.
Marco:
So what would that look like?
Marco:
I don't... It's hard to know.
Marco:
It's hard to really tell.
Marco:
Maybe, like, you know, really early feature, like, or code or API shifts that kind of, like, suggest something that might be coming down the road, you know, like... So not even, like, Apple announcements, but, like, you know, things where they don't say, but hear a size class, like that type of thing?
Marco:
Yeah, I mean, certainly, like, I would consider that kind of, like, the bare minimum, right?
Marco:
And, you know, with Apple, like, a lot of times, observing Apple is kind of like observing a black hole, right?
Marco:
You can't see the thing you're looking for, but you can try to observe effects of things around it that might indicate that it's there.
Marco:
Something that indicates that there is a next generation of macOS or of UI development on the Mac or of Siri getting significantly better.
Marco:
Just something to indicate that this work is going on and is progressing rather than
Marco:
The way it looks right now in a lot of ways is they just aren't doing any work on these things, right?
Marco:
And so even if we don't get any official announcements, I just want to see a sign of life that that's the direction they're going in rather than just letting these things slowly wither and die.
Casey:
I don't think you're going to be too happy.
John:
If we're talking about like the things that, uh, before we get to preview slash prediction, we're just talking about like, what would you like to see?
John:
What would make you happy?
John:
Um, I think I don't, uh, well, let me just get the quick one out of the way.
John:
Uh, Mac pro trees, a teaser would make me happy, but I'm not holding my breath.
John:
But anyway, um, uh,
John:
I'm kind of on board the train with the... I don't even remember if it was a rumor or announcement or whatever that Apple was trying to slow down and pull features out of iOS 12 and move things to more of a two-year cycle and that kind of slow down.
John:
And what would make me happy to see is that this WWDC...
John:
reflects a slowdown which means like wouldn't that be bad that means it's like boring stuff and we'd be talking about oh they don't have anything to announce except for like boring stuff that you know there's nothing exciting at this show there's no new hardware there's no amazing new software and even though we didn't think there was going to be anything it's kind of disappointing but i would take that as a sign like that the slowdown in philosophy is in effect and is bearing fruit the less they have to say
John:
uh the more i will expect the things they do announce to actually work and be useful so all the new things that were i think we should start off talking about are things we know they're going to announce anyway hopefully they're boring and they're reliable and they're predictable and they have fewer bugs than their equivalents in the past couple of years uh and long-standing bugs that bother everybody end up getting fixed like
John:
that kind of a slowdown which sounds boring but is kind of what i would like from from apple now to sort of to regroup because there's lots of potentially very large things happening in 2019 including the mac pro but you know also like all the stuff with the cross-platform stuff that really is for next year or like the next big move on on watch os or whatever i don't need that stuff this year like i don't need the big revolutions in any of these areas
John:
Take the time to roll that out next year and have this year be like a rebuilding year.
John:
where there aren't any earth shattering announcements but everything that is announced ships on time works better than you would expect for the state that it's in uh all the products come out of the gate when they actually get their pointo releases more solid than usual and all sorts of little bugs that have been around for years and years get fixed that would make me happy that's a good one it would make the press flip out of course but you know whatever who cares about the press
John:
Yeah, we're not the press.
John:
If we were the press, we would have press passes.
John:
Exactly.
John:
Oh, there it is.
John:
Then we can flip out.
Casey:
Well done.
Casey:
Yeah, you know, I think the number one thing on my list is having now experienced the comparative bliss that is the Amazon lady in a tube.
Casey:
It is just ever more apparent how awful Siri is.
Casey:
And in fact, just this evening, I was talking to Aaron, my phone in my pocket.
Casey:
And I don't remember what it was I said, but all of a sudden I heard my pocket talking.
Casey:
And Siri was saying something about my mother, which I wasn't really clear on and definitely startled me.
Casey:
And I looked at my screen and my screen said, call mom.
Casey:
I don't know how Siri heard the wake word because I didn't say anything that even vaguely sounded like a holy telephone.
Casey:
And I didn't even I wasn't even talking about my mom at the time either.
Casey:
Now, in the defense of my phone, it wasn't my pocket.
Casey:
But that is the first time I think I've ever had that brutal a misfire with Siri.
Casey:
But yeah.
Casey:
All that said, Siri has been ever more frustrating, particularly when I go for my run.
Casey:
And I think I talked about this a couple of months ago, but when I go for a run in the morning, I go with just my watch and my AirPods.
Casey:
And I've actually gotten into the habit of turning Bluetooth completely off on my phone before I run.
Casey:
Because if I don't do that, then apparently from what I can piece together, the watches is stretching so hard to try to be able to contact my phone so it can do all the Siri related things that I occasionally ask it to do, like play a different album or even turn up the damn volume or whatever.
Casey:
But it can't quite get there via Bluetooth.
Casey:
So it just sits and spins and sits and spins and sits and spins.
Casey:
And no, it doesn't fall off to the already active cellular connection.
Casey:
It just sits and spins and sits and spins.
Casey:
And eventually it will just give up.
Casey:
So that actually doesn't have a lot to do with Siri, but it's just something I thought about that is driving me bananas.
Marco:
Actually, a related thing is on my watchOS wish list, which is that because it tries Bluetooth as much as possible, that also means that when an app tries to transfer files or data to the watch, it will prefer Bluetooth if it's available at all, even when it's on its charger, because it doesn't want to power up the Wi-Fi radio to save power.
Marco:
But this means that if you're transferring a podcast over Bluetooth, it takes forever.
Marco:
Or trying to download a file off the internet over Bluetooth, it takes forever.
Casey:
I don't think that's true.
Casey:
I think forever is considerably shorter than the amount of time it actually takes.
Casey:
Because I've lived this life.
Casey:
And you are 100% correct.
Casey:
It is heinously slow.
Casey:
And that's the thing is that just like you said, there is no reason in theory that this couldn't use Wi-Fi or hell, even cellular if it wanted to.
Casey:
For those of us who have cellular watches that pay too much money for them, not that I'm bitter.
Casey:
But no, it insists on using Bluetooth for reasons that are beyond me.
Casey:
And again, on Wi-Fi, okay.
Casey:
Excuse me, on battery, okay.
Casey:
I can sort of understand that.
Casey:
But, like you said, Marco, on the charger, come on!
Casey:
Like, that's just... No.
Casey:
No.
Casey:
That's just a poor choice.
Marco:
The batteries are so big these days.
Marco:
Like, why not prefer Wi-Fi and cellular until the battery is down to, like, 75% or 50% and then start preferring Bluetooth?
Marco:
Like, there are much better solutions.
Marco:
And, I mean, the way it feels to me, like, from the API level, it just kind of feels like this is how it was with Watch 1, and they just never...
John:
revisited that decision since then so hopefully they will but i don't know that's one of my watch os wishlist items so this is just the the kind of boring change that you can't really demo you just have to kind of say like improve battery life and radio handling and maybe if you go to that session you learn that they've changed a priority but it's the kind of like
John:
small long-standing issue that is only issue in certain situations but it has annoying been annoying people for a long time and fixing it is not going to get you into the keynote right like it's not something you can even brag about or demo and maybe it doesn't even make it to a big word background on a slide but we all want it fixed right this is the type of thing that we would hope would get fixed and you're just waiting patiently for it to get fixed this this is the year to do it if there's not going to be anything super exciting do all the boring things and people will
John:
We'll grumble, but eventually we'll love it.
Casey:
But yeah, what am I looking for?
Casey:
I'm looking for Siri improvements first and foremost.
Casey:
I would like to see the Mac not dead.
Casey:
I am less worked up about it than the two of you guys are, but I am worked up about it.
Casey:
I would like to see any mention of the Mac doing anything at all.
Casey:
That would be lovely.
Casey:
I wouldn't mind new hardware, new Mac hardware, but I'll believe it if I see it.
Casey:
But the other thing I'd like, or two things I'd like,
Casey:
So I'm not entirely sure if either will happen, but I'd like to see some notification improvements, you know, some more.
Casey:
And Mike has been banging this drum for a while, and I think he's right.
Casey:
Some more granular controls for notifications, again, on Upgrade This Week.
Casey:
I don't recall if it was Mike or Jason.
Casey:
One of them said, hey, what about like geofencing your notification preferences?
Casey:
I think that was on upgrade.
Casey:
Maybe it wasn't.
Casey:
But anyways, you know, like at work, I want these notifications at home.
Casey:
I want these notifications or whatever the case may be.
Casey:
Or, you know, can we can we group things more intelligently?
Casey:
Can we do something to make this better and preferably have more granular controls over what does or does not make it through the kind of the barrier?
Casey:
Additionally, I would love to have either third-party watch faces, which we've all been banging that drum for a long time, or I think it would be really excellent to be able to have third-party Siri watch face widgets or whatever those are called.
Casey:
Because I actually...
Casey:
I use the Siri watch face when I'm at work because it's a really nice way to kind of see what your day is, what's in front of you for the day in a very lovely and easy to scroll, nice way.
Casey:
And it would be awesome if I could have like a weather report inserted from carrot weather when it thinks it's going to rain, you know, at four 53, oh, it's probably going to rain or something like that.
Casey:
And I'm not even sure what other ones I want, but I feel like this is something I want in my life.
Casey:
So those are my three, like, I would really love these things to happen.
Casey:
And so it's general Siri improvements, Siri watch face, like widgets for third parties.
Casey:
Again, I'll ask for third party watch faces, but I feel like this is my Gene Munster TV moment.
Casey:
And finally, notifications improvements, I think would be lovely.
Casey:
But again, I'm not sure I'm expecting any of that.
John:
In terms of the secrecy and us not knowing at this late date much of anything, like the usual read on that in the modern Apple era is that hardware stuff is much harder to keep secrets than software stuff, especially software stuff that only happens in California, right?
John:
So that argues for
John:
no hardware of any interest because that probably would have leaked by now if it's in any state to be announced.
John:
But software stuff is always completely up for grabs because Apple has shown that it can keep that really, really secret even when it's something huge like Swift or whatever, right?
John:
They usually can't keep secret the idea that there is a project underway to do something about this, but they can keep secret of like, what year will it be released?
John:
When will it be announced, right?
John:
So...
John:
i would if this is going to be anything remotely dramatic i have to think it's going to be software which is kind of a shame because there's a lot of sort of again boring uh rebuilding year style hardware that they could put out like slightly revised laptops to address some of our concerns right they've had a long time to do something with the keyboard right uh you know some kind of device besides an iphone 10
John:
that lacks a home button so pick one of the ipads and make a swipey version of it right maybe with face id or i don't know like there's all sorts of things it small iterative non-revolutionary things they could do with their current hardware line and announce but just seems like if any of that was in the cards we would have heard leaks from it already so i'm not holding my breath for any of that i'm also not holding my breath for siri improvements just because of like
John:
i mean history and and the fact that they're still like hiring important people to help work on siri it's like if you're just if you're just hiring important people to help on siri like we're not gonna see the fruits of those labors anytime soon so you know maybe next year right so but who knows again software stuff is secret maybe they're bringing new people on board but maybe the second or third generation siri has been in the works for two years now and now is this coming out year we we never do know
John:
yeah i mean it does often seem like they just kind of woke up to the mac having a major problem last spring and to siri having a major problem this spring yeah i hope i really i mean the evidence shows that that probably is the case with the mac but i really hope that's not true of siri because that's that's their bread and butter that's the that's their product that they supposedly care a lot about and it's a flagship feature and i don't like i think it is incumbent upon everyone in leadership at apple to own all of their competitors
John:
Devices and products so they know what everyone else is doing.
John:
Is it conceivable that these people had no experience with any of the other voice assistants for years and years?
John:
I find that hard to believe and it would be bad if that was the case.
John:
I think they should have known.
John:
how far behind siri is and maybe maybe it's like they knew they were behind they thought they were working to improvement but to improve it but it turns out they needed an entirely different approach and maybe they just discovered you know the spring that they need an entirely different approach and prior to that they had been like we're improving we're trying to improve it and just not
John:
recognizing that they're not making progress fast enough or they're barking up the wrong tree i don't know that's the kind of question that that apple won't answer it's like why is siri not better you know they always do improve it every year it's just the improvements have not been keeping pace with the competitors improvements and that's been true for many years and now the gap is wide
Marco:
I think the basic flaws remain.
Marco:
It's still unreliable, inconsistent, slow, and too cutesy.
Marco:
Like, those have been the problems since the beginning.
John:
And not smart enough.
John:
Like, I mean, this is a meme on Twitter where people post, like, it's the blessing and curse of Apple that when you talk to your phone, it gives you the little transcript of what Siri thinks you said and then Siri's response.
John:
So it's perfect for screenshotting.
John:
And that is definitely a genre where someone asked some question or tried to say something to set up some kind of appointment.
John:
And Siri was unclear about something.
John:
So I said, do you mean, you know, Thursday, the 28th or Friday, the 29th?
John:
And the answer was 29th.
John:
And Siri said, I'm not sure what the weather is on blah, blah, blah.
John:
What?
John:
what like it just it clearly understood the 29 and it had just asked a question about 28 or 29 but could not map that 29 back to you know so you just take a screenshot of this absurd conversation there should be fewer of those over time not more you know and it's it's much more dang like audio because you're like well maybe it didn't understand me or misinterpreted what i said but it puts on the screen what it thinks you said and it just asks you a question about the 28th or 29th you say 29 and
John:
It puts the two and the nine on the screen as what it understood you to say and then goes off the rails.
John:
Stuff like that just can't happen.
John:
Right.
John:
So I hope to see those type of screenshots either go away or become situations where it's like, oh, well, you can't expect Siri to have figured that out.
John:
That is actually complicated and nuanced.
John:
But the brain dead stupid ones should go away.
Marco:
Imagine if you look at the incredible amount of access Siri has to us, to our devices, to our information, to our bodies.
Marco:
Siri has the privileged access spot on the highest profile, best mobile devices online.
Marco:
Now we have the watch with Siri.
Marco:
We have, of course, iPhone and iPad.
Marco:
We have the Mac with parts of Siri.
Marco:
We have the Apple TV with Siri.
Marco:
We have the HomePod with Siri.
Marco:
These could be amazing products, and this could be an amazingly useful assistant if it was not even great, but merely good.
Marco:
But it's not even that yet.
Marco:
Now that we're seven years into it, it's really concerning that it isn't better than it is yet.
Marco:
I just want so much more from Siri.
Marco:
But I don't want Siri to be better than Alexa, better than Google Assistant, better than Cortana.
Marco:
I don't need it to be better than those.
Marco:
I just need it to be almost as good, even.
Marco:
It doesn't even approach that.
Marco:
It's not even almost as good.
Marco:
It's
Marco:
barely in the game at all compared to the other ones and like i just i needed to be where alexa was two years ago like that's that's where i need siri to be that would be that would be a huge upgrade from where it is now and that's sad anyway uh with siri specific requests i do have some of those um what i really hope of course for overcast i really hope for a siri kit audio intent
Marco:
This is something that I still don't know if it's necessarily likely.
Marco:
There's obviously a lot of work involved in building some kind of system for Siri to index what is available from the music app.
Marco:
There are ways in SiriKit, which I now know because I use SiriKit in my Swift teaching walking map app.
Marco:
So now I know kind of how the basic intents API works.
Marco:
And there is a provision there for the app that's being called upon to provide vocabulary words to Siri that the user might be using.
Marco:
So things like names of their notes or names of their playlists or whatever else.
Marco:
So I could provide those for Overcast.
Marco:
I could say, all right, here's the podcast you subscribe to.
Marco:
So this is the list of things they might be saying and try to match that and let me know what you find.
Marco:
But something like Spotify, it's a little bit harder for the Spotify app to provide a list of strings that could be any band they could be possibly asking for, any song title.
Marco:
That could get pretty extreme pretty quickly.
Marco:
So for the audio intent system, there would have to be some kind of...
Marco:
different and more complex maybe asynchronous or offline like indexing process kind of like what spotlight does on the mac um you know or some kind of web search api which would be probably unlikely for apple to use um so that kind of like i see the complexity in an audio intent i also see the the possible competitive pressure for apple to never add it because now
Marco:
Apple Music is the only thing you can use.
Marco:
You can call it by name from Siri on your phone, which is useful in the car, or from a HomePod.
Marco:
So that boosts Apple Music subscription.
Marco:
So I can see why they might not do it.
Marco:
I think those are bad reasons.
Marco:
I think they should do it anyway because I think the value it provides to the platform and to their hardware products is better than whatever they're making from Apple Music and whatever effort they're saving.
Marco:
But anyway, a SiriKit audio intent would be very, very good, and that would make me very happy.
Marco:
I also think, you know, currently the SiriKit intents are very narrow in focus and in scope.
Marco:
So most apps can't actually involve Siri in their interface from their usage.
Marco:
Most apps have no use for Siri because most apps are not note-taking apps, workout apps, reminders apps, payment, like cash payment apps, or ride-hailing apps.
Marco:
Those are most of the – and to-do apps.
Marco:
Those are most of the SiriKit intents.
Marco:
Like, if your app is not one of those, like, five or six things that they have these little narrow intents for, not only is there nothing for you to use, but you aren't even allowed to, like, fake it.
Marco:
Because AppReview will, I think, if you try to, like... If I tried to say, oh, yeah, Overcast is a notes app.
Marco:
So if you say, like, you know...
Marco:
Add play to my ATP note.
Marco:
I could try to fake it and make that work, but I'd be rejected pretty fast.
Marco:
So what I want to see from SiriKit is not just like two or three new narrow intents.
Marco:
What I really want to see is less specific generic intents that can be used more broadly for lots of app types, even if it isn't necessarily as sophisticated or as good as specialized intent for a narrow thing could be.
Marco:
So this could be as simple as do blank in app.
Marco:
or tell app to blank blank with like an action and an object so tell app to action object or action object in app or do action in app and then the app can provide through the vocabulary api
Marco:
a small set of actions and object vocabularies that it could be asking about.
Marco:
This is something that the Mac text-to-speech API had like a billion years ago.
Marco:
This is not a new concept and doing speech recognition with a limited vocabulary is really accurate and really easy these days.
Marco:
So like...
Marco:
That is not going to be as smart as, you know, something that's more, you know, like a multi-step kind of here.
Marco:
What do you want your message to so-and-so to say?
Marco:
Well, where do you want to hail your ride from the Lyft app?
Marco:
Like it doesn't, those are great that they exist.
Marco:
But there's this massive number of apps out there that currently can use nothing with Siri.
Marco:
And that hurts everything.
Marco:
That hurts Siri's usefulness.
Marco:
It hurts developers.
Marco:
And it hurts users' ability to use apps through Siri that they might want to use.
Marco:
So just some kind of generic action that can just map a generic list of verbs and objects to the system and have the system respond to basic commands like that.
Marco:
So many apps could use that, that, yeah, it isn't as fancy as the narrow intents, but it's better than nothing, which is currently what we have and what it seems like we're going to have for a while.
John:
And incidentally, that kind of change is exactly the kind of thing that happens year over year at WWDC.
John:
Like they'll they'll announce an API and it will be very limited.
John:
And there'll be a bunch of use cases that it doesn't cover.
John:
But the ones that it does cover, it covers well.
John:
And it has, you know, maybe has a novel design like this does where instead of just, you know, the brain dead thing where you say words, we turn into text and we chuck the text over the wall to your application and let you handle it.
John:
this you know is much more sophisticated in saying well because these intents are so specific we can figure out what they mean and by the time we talk to you your app doesn't have to deal with text we'll just tell your app what to do and you know they're very very limited but also very uh you know a novel take not the the most obvious thing that you would do right and then at that wwdc and over the course of the year they get feedback from developers using it okay i like this about it but i can't use it in this way or i'd like to do something like that or
John:
it you know there's these common use cases that don't fit like margaret was saying like spotify i can't give you lists of my vocabulary i have every song in the world right and apple you know says okay thanks for the feedback blah blah and then the next year they come out with an improved version of
John:
this API to saying now we cover more use cases maybe we have a generic one to cover use cases like Spotify maybe there's a few classes of applications that we want to cover not just specific intents but these classes require a different approach require approach more like Marco described or whatever and that reads mostly as a boring
John:
uh thing like maybe you know it gets a mention in the keynote but if you go to the session and if you've spent the year sending feedback and being frustrated that you can't use it and you're in one of those big new classes you're like oh wow this is great like this is why this is why developers for people don't understand why anyone would want to go to wwc developers get excited when
John:
You know, they go to the keynote and maybe there's some fun things, but doesn't really go into their lives.
John:
And they go to the sessions that interest them that are related to their work or their app.
John:
And in those sessions, they learn, oh, this is going to change everything.
John:
Like this new API is what I've wanted because now all these things that I wanted to do, I don't have to write my own code for.
John:
I don't need a weird workaround or I'm able to add features that I've always wanted to add that I couldn't before for app review reasons or whatever.
John:
And they get super excited about something that's buried 20 minutes into an obscure session somewhere.
John:
And the fruits of that come out like, you know, over the course of the year applications that didn't have an ability, you know, start getting it.
John:
Like if you just talk into the air and have Overcast play a specific episode for you and be able to tell it to do things.
John:
that's a game changer uh if that's going to be the case marco will find out about it by you know watching a scream of obsession uh next week and then you'll find out about it if you're not listening to this podcast uh you know weeks or months later and it will just be like oh why they finally added this feature that's great but wwc is excited for exactly these reasons that they make changes to apis that seem boring and inconsequential but have wide-reaching consequences over the course of the year so i'm actually kind of hopeful um
John:
not that Siri is going to get radically improved, but that pretty much exactly what Marco described is entirely plausible for a sort of down year where it's not going to make Siri magically amazing, but it will be the next major step in the Siri Intense API, which will, you know, will go a long way to making our apps nicer for all of us.
Marco:
One more thing I would like to have on the intense front is SiriKit default app settings.
Marco:
The idea of users being able to change the default app on iOS for various system-level things has been on people's wish lists since the beginning of iOS.
Marco:
People have wanted to be able to set Chrome as their browser or set Gmail as their mail client.
Marco:
I don't see those things happening for lots of reasons, various system-level integrations and stuff like that.
Marco:
But having SiriKit be able to say, you know what, when I use a reminders intent, when I say remind me in things to do this, can I just have an option that any reminding intent defaults to things or whatever, insert your app of choice for your intent of choice here?
Marco:
That would go a long way towards, I think, boosting usage of SiriKit and just making the experience of using it smoother for the users.
Marco:
Having any advancement to that system is going to pay dividends in how people use Siri, how good Siri is, how much they're able to use it, and just how little friction there is.
Marco:
Right now, I say, remind me in things to do blah, blah, blah.
Marco:
And about...
Marco:
one out of eight to ten times it misses the things part and adds it to reminders for no apparent reason uh and you know just again it's more friction and i have to remember to say somewhere in the sentence in things and it just it would be nice if i didn't have to say that because i never want to add things to the system reminders app and if i did i could say remind me in reminders to do this
Marco:
So having a default system for SiriKit apps, I know a default system for web browsers and emails is too much to ask, probably.
Marco:
But SiriKit seems like a win-win for everybody.
John:
The default app thing is like the one feature that we didn't get in iOS 8.
John:
Like that was the year we got all the things we thought we were never going to get.
John:
And you could put that in the keynote.
John:
Like that is a big applause line in the keynote of saying, you can now pick your default apps, not just for the intents, but OS-wide.
John:
I don't think there are any...
John:
reason remaining reasonable technical barriers are doing it's just a matter of doing the work to do it like you've had long enough like we've waited you know you did you did third-party keyboards but you didn't do i can change my default mail app it's ridiculous right so i'm i think that needs to come i doesn't maybe it doesn't need to be this year but it better be on their their radar because it's people will love it it's like kind of like the notification stuff like this sound we're at the point without with ios where
John:
There's not a lot of huge features that everyone's going to use that people feel like are missing, but there's plenty of features that people use every day that if they were improved, if you said, oh, and by the way, we're going to let you change your default mail app.
John:
So many people use Gmail or whatever.
John:
That's definitely a big applause line at WWDC.
John:
And it's just, it's one more thing.
John:
I found another category of things you feel embarrassed having to explain to people who are not obsessive Apple followers while, you know, setting up their phone.
John:
It's like,
John:
Oh, look at all these great apps and I can use this and that and that.
John:
And they're like, you get the question, you know, three weeks later.
John:
How can I make it when I mail something using this handy share thing that you showed me?
John:
How can I make it so it mails it and, you know, it sends it in Gmail?
John:
And that you can kind of answer them.
John:
Oh, get rid of the mail thing and put the Gmail icon there or whatever.
John:
But it's like, what about when, like in your case, what about when I tell it to remind me?
John:
How can I make it remind me?
John:
And it's like, then you'd have to start explaining and be like, okay.
John:
Well, you can't really do that.
John:
You have to always remember to say things.
John:
And if you have an unpronounceable reminder application, you're kind of screwed.
John:
Learn to say, what is the to-do-ist one?
John:
To-do-ist, I don't know.
John:
To-do-ist, right.
John:
That's an embarrassing, long conversation that maybe doesn't come up that often, but it's the type of thing where I can make excuses for iOS 1, 2, 3, 4, 5, right?
John:
But we're up into 12 now.
John:
It's time for that to get on someone's radar.
John:
And honestly, I think it is a...
John:
definitely a one-year project and it is a big applause line and it will be it'll be a big like before and after thing we'll be like i remember when you couldn't even change the default application on ios that was tough and it will help third-party developers that's what you want to do at wwc tell people you third-party developer have a better opportunity to make more money in the app store because now people will be able to use your application as the default reminders application that will make them use it more and want to pay for it more and so on and so forth
Marco:
And that's been a big theme to things that we've gotten at previous WWDCs that we've been very happy with is ways for third-party apps to have the same levels of access and privilege and functionality on the system that Apple's own apps do.
Marco:
Like giving us the same abilities that Apple's apps might have.
Marco:
Like when we got background audio.
Marco:
Finally, we could have third-party music and podcast players, and they could do all the same things that Apple's could do, stuff like that.
Marco:
And over the years, Apple really has broken down a lot of those barriers of differences between what their apps can do and what any app can do.
Marco:
And Siri involvement here is one of those major ones that's and default handling of URLs is one of those major ones that is still a really big barrier that significantly hinders third party apps that rely on these things.
Marco:
And so anything they can do to level that playing field a little bit is going to be way better for the apps and therefore way better for Apple's users and Apple.
Casey:
I don't think default apps, being able to set a default web browser to set a default email client, I'm hard-pressed to imagine an Apple where that's okay.
John:
Third-party keyboards, Casey.
John:
Third-party keyboards.
Casey:
I hear you.
Casey:
I really do.
John:
That was the year where it was like, Apple's never going to do X, and they're like, guess what?
John:
They just did all the X except for default apps.
John:
They've done it on macOS for years.
John:
It's not like they're
John:
there is work involved i understand not doing it in the first say decade of ios or whatever long it's been but now is the time uh people are saying oh there's no big features no missing from ios right but there are little ones there are little ones and they are missing uh and most of them you just look at the competition to see what they are right i mean the enhanced notifications and
John:
the more sophisticated uh you know speech stuff uh and yes uh default applications like it's it's it's a thing that they're going to have to do eventually uh and if not this year then maybe next year but please not 10 years from now because that will be too long like it's it's an embarrassing it's kind of like a vestige of the days when apple didn't think there would be third-party applications at all like the the one year when they had no app store and they're just like you know make web apps or whatever uh
John:
Uh, having the bundled mail app be the default and the bundle reminder app be the default.
John:
And anytime you say mail and remind it, it's like, that's not, that's not the world we live in anymore.
John:
And the, the, the phone should reflect that.
Casey:
Well, it's funny you said low-hanging fruit because I was going to say myself that the only thing that gives me pause when I say there's no freaking way they're going to do it is that we are running out of obvious low-hanging fruit for Apple to fix, which is good.
Casey:
I mean, that's very good.
Casey:
That means iOS is getting pretty mature and pretty robust, and that's a good thing.
Casey:
But...
Casey:
That is, you know, setting default apps is a is a piece of theoretically low hanging fruit.
Casey:
Of course, now I'm committing the ultimate programmer sin and saying, oh, I'm sure that's easy.
Casey:
It's just how hard could it be?
John:
How hard could it be?
John:
There are complications, but like, you know, you've had time to deal with the complications.
John:
You've had many, many years to say, oh, we're not doing that this year.
John:
It's not a high enough priority.
John:
There are more important things to do.
John:
It's complicated, right?
John:
All those conversations should have happened.
John:
Yes, that was the right answer then.
John:
Now the answer should be, you know what?
John:
That actually is probably one of the things we can do that gets the most bang for the buck.
John:
about it you know making third making it a more attractive platform for third-party developers and making users happy with it like that's the level we're at now with ios where it's like you know same thing with more sophisticated uh you know notification facilities this is a this is a pain point for users we've had we have notifications they're good they've been improving but there are still a couple things uh that we could change to make them better for our users and you know add a special apple touch to it right um
John:
Uh, so it would, you know, do it slightly better or smarter than Android if you want to be clever with it.
John:
But, uh, our, you know, our notifications are not as sophisticated and it results in our devices and knowing our users in situations that we don't want it to.
John:
So let's, you know, let's tackle that.
John:
Now's, now's the time for that stuff or, or next year, you know, sometime around there.
Marco:
With so much of this stuff, I know this probably is not the case, but so many areas of Apple's OSs and so many of their first-party apps appear to have a staff of one person.
Marco:
It seems like they just make glacial progress in some of these areas.
Marco:
And...
Marco:
Every year, the big new thing of the new OS is something that it seems like shouldn't have taken an entire year for the biggest company in the world with all the money in the world.
Marco:
It seems like that's kind of all you did in a year.
Marco:
I think another major area that I would like to see Apple improve on, which I don't expect to happen anytime soon, because by all accounts, it's actually gotten worse in the last few years, especially under Tim Cook's structure of management, is...
Marco:
I want to see a sign that Apple can walk and chew gum at the same time.
Marco:
I want to see a sign of them being able to actually hustle a little bit, pick up the pace, actually innovate on all their platforms without two-thirds of them being...
Marco:
seemingly neglected all the time like actually move forward and use the massive resources they have to maintain all the platforms that they voluntarily launched it's not like people force them to do all these things um so i just i want to see more hustle i want to see more like like i don't want to be constantly saying like that's all you did in in a whole year well isn't that like the opposite of my desire for a slowdown
Marco:
well your desire for a slowdown is only a thing because it seems like they can't update two os's with quality like but that's not the right answer to that isn't well you better slow down so you do everything even more glacially the answer to that is there's some bottlenecks here that need to be fixed like well it's more like i mean it's it's more like don't race ahead so quickly that you leave like your messes behind you right that's that's the philosophy of the slowdown it's not so much that we feel like you can't
John:
improve simultaneously, but that you're racing ahead on all your platforms so fast that you're not taking time to sort of pay down the tech debt and fix the little niggling bugs and all that stuff that's behind.
John:
So, I mean, I suppose you could say...
John:
If they sort of improved the baseline quality of all their products, but did it across all of them, not just like the iPhone.
John:
iOS, when running on iPhone, got much better, but the Mac was still buggy and the iPad was still neglected.
John:
I feel like if they can make a noticeable improvement, even if it's just on stability and bugs, but across all of their things, it would show they are able to walk and chew gum at the same time.
John:
They're just not yet at the point where they can show a noticeable improvement across all stuff and also massively advance all stuff.
John:
And you know what I mean?
John:
Like I don't, I don't think you got to walk before you can run.
John:
I feel like they're again, rebuilding.
John:
They need to, they need to get back to basics and yes, pay attention to everything.
John:
Don't leave anything behind and say, Oh, we're just not doing anything to that this year.
John:
But what you do to everything starts small, just improve quality, minor new features, uh, better stability, removal of old bugs, uh,
John:
But do it across everything.
John:
Honestly, I think that would be an improvement because it used to be that it would like race ahead as fast as you can, but totally ignore certain platforms.
John:
And that didn't feel good.
Casey:
I think it's just tough because, you know, obviously the best we can do is armchair quarterback and pontificate about what's going on inside Apple.
Casey:
But it sure feels like this annual release cycle – and we've talked about this before – the annual release cycle is not compatible with the sorts of things they're trying to do now.
Casey:
And this perhaps relates to what I was saying a few minutes ago about there being not a lot of low-hanging fruit anymore.
Casey:
And so, you know, the things that they want to do to iOS and to macOS as well –
Casey:
They're big, complex things that take a long time to do.
Casey:
And if they're being compelled to do them in a year or less, I'm sure I'm oversimplifying some, but that may not be compatible.
Casey:
And so I think some sort of indication that Apple is willing to say, no, this marketing feature we were really going to hang our hats on for 2018 is
Casey:
It's just not ready.
Casey:
It's just not ready.
Casey:
So let's wait and let's not say a thing until it is ready.
Casey:
And it seems like Apple used to be much better about that than they are now.
Casey:
And we did hear a report, one of you mentioned this earlier, a report a couple of months ago that they are going to go back to doing that and they're going to have the...
Casey:
courage to not release things if they so desire, which I think is healthy and good.
Casey:
And so I think it's both things, right?
Casey:
Like we want them to move quickly on the things they can, which is what Marco was saying.
Casey:
But we also want them to have the strength of will or courage to say, you know what, this just ain't ready.
Casey:
It's got to wait.
Casey:
And I think both of those things can be true.
John:
A yearly release cycle doesn't mean things take a year to do.
John:
That just means every year you release something, right?
John:
So I feel like the slowdown, like, again, I mentioned this on past shows, like, many of the projects that come out have been in works for three, five years, right?
John:
They're not one-year projects.
John:
It's just that, like, the rumor about them slowing down was, like...
John:
let's become more aggressive and more honest with ourselves about whether something actually is ready this year right so that's the rumor was things got booted out of ios 12 like things that you know two years ago apple would have said yeah we could probably squeeze that into ios 12 there's always this you know as as new os's approach you have to decide which feature makes the cut and which don't which is why nobody inside apple can remember when anything was released because they've all been in the works for years and years and you're like oh yeah that's right it didn't even make that release even though it was almost done we saved it for the next one right so the change in apple is
John:
when we make that trade-off conversation about this has been in the works for years is it ready to go on ios 12 or are we going to save it for 13 to change wherever like the balance point is of like go no go to say actually let's be even more conservative because we've proven to ourselves that wherever whatever balance we were striking before we were being too aggressive we would say well
John:
we could probably get that ready in time for wwc we could probably ship that in the os and then once you announce it you're kind of committed and it turns out you know like so that their balance was a little bit off so it's not about projects taking a year or two versus two years or whatever it's more about uh where you draw the line and where you where you cut things off
Casey:
That's a fair point.
John:
And then one way to think about the slowdown thing is at the top of the notes here I had, I usually do this every day every day, and I'm thinking about it in a different way for this one.
John:
The stuff we kind of know they're going to announce, and for years we've
John:
been right in knowing that they're going to announce these things like there'll be a new ios there'll be a new mac os there'll be a new version of xcode right like things that just happen at every wwdc and it's just a question of what will be in the new ios what will be in the new mac os what will be in the new xcode what will be announced for swift which is much easier because it's all open right but uh i'm wondering if one thing they could do that would be dramatic would be
John:
not to have a new mac os this year not to have a new i i mean you probably can't get away with not having a new ios like like i'm just wondering if if you can if the the standard required suite of things that we know that are at every wwdc is there any wiggle room on that that there wouldn't be one of them
John:
What if, you know, what if they just did Mac OS 10.13.16.17.18?
John:
Like, what if they just, they just continued that train, right?
John:
And add features and in point releases.
John:
But if they didn't have the burden of having a newly named, newly numbered, new major version of all their stuff.
John:
maybe not even a new version of xcode maybe just an xcode but i don't even know what the hell version xcode is on but just you know don't don't change the the first number the second number just change the third number um i i don't think that's likely i think there will be those those new things and they'll just be less and different stuff in them but it's worth considering whether apple is is a prisoner to every year having one of those things even if it's just like a marketing thing it's like well this is really ios 11 point whatever but we're just going to change the first number to 12
John:
and add the two features to fix a bunch of bugs.
John:
Like, I don't see that in the cards, but I'm thinking about what the reaction would be and whether or not it would be a healthier thing to do, to Casey's point about, you know, do you need to... The pressure to cut a new major release of all these important components and to be able to have enough marketing features to be worthy of a new name and a new number and a new section of your website...
John:
that seems like it might influence the decision about whether something is ready to fit in an os but it's like well we can't cut that if we cut that from ios 12 what the hell how why do we even get to call it 12 what's different about it than 11 except for a bunch of bug fixes and minor features how is this even a 12 that needs to stay in and that can lead you to the path of either shipping something before you should or promising something that doesn't arrive for a year later
Casey:
Anything else with regard to software?
Casey:
Are we really expecting anything for macOS?
John:
Is that a thing?
John:
I think there'll be 10.14, and I think it will have a new name, and God knows what they're going to include.
John:
I mean, I suppose there'll be metal and ARKit stuff.
John:
There's lots of sort of young frameworks that...
John:
can kind of carry the weight of new major versions of the os was like and if you want this new uh you know cool ar kit functionality it's only an ios 12 and mac os 10.14 name of california city right like that it's not really an os feature but it comes with the os and probably requires the os uh but
John:
In terms of major new features that are not a cross-platform UI framework for macOS, I don't know.
John:
I've even given up asking for OpenGL because obviously that ship has sailed.
John:
So I feel like it's just framework stuff, maybe an enhanced version of Time Machine that takes advantage of APFS.
John:
But even that, that can wait until next year, too.
John:
iOS 12, I think we mostly discussed.
John:
There are plenty of things they can do on iOS 12 that will be crowd-pleasing.
John:
they will have a significant impact on users and third-party developers and they should do those things watch os you know we've talked about that as well like although have they always had a new version of watch os at wwdc i don't i forget what the timing on watch i believe so yeah they have yeah i mean watch i i really am curious to see where that goes
Marco:
Because watchOS is so weird.
Marco:
It always has been.
Marco:
They've made improvements over the last couple of releases, but it's still not what you want it to be.
Marco:
It's still not great.
Marco:
They still need to rethink a lot of what watchOS is and how things are done.
Marco:
Like Casey, I would love to see third-party watch faces.
Marco:
I don't expect that.
Marco:
I expect Apple to continue to want to lock that down for themselves.
John:
But although that would be such an insane crowd pleaser, like I don't think they ever have to do that.
John:
But boy, people will go nuts for that because talk about things you can sell to people with watches.
John:
You could sell watch faces for sure.
John:
Of course.
Marco:
And, you know, it's just for, you know, it's a fashion item.
Marco:
It's already, you know, kind of awkward that everyone has the same watch.
Marco:
Like that's not great for people's fashion identities and stuff.
Marco:
They have customizability with the straps, somewhat, but, geez, give people the ability to have their own watch face.
Marco:
Let them make this their own.
Marco:
And then, ideally, hopefully, the watch faces could be a little bit smart, too, maybe offering their own intelligent displays of certain types of data or complications.
Marco:
There's lots of ways they could do it.
Marco:
I have a feeling if they did it at all, they would probably do it in a very limited way.
Marco:
And I still don't expect them to do it at all, honestly.
Marco:
But if they did, the potential could be great if they allow it to be.
Marco:
I would love to see that.
Marco:
I would even just see... I'd love to see things like...
Marco:
In addition to all my other complaints about WatchKit, because WatchKit is horrible, and I still maintain that WatchKit should be entirely thrown away, and there should be a UI framework that Apple uses and developers use.
Marco:
Whether they're working on such a thing, I have no idea, but I hope they are.
Marco:
But who knows?
Marco:
And there's lots of things with audio that I want to see.
Marco:
Obviously, my number one problem with my watch app,
Marco:
is that the now playing glance has a volume control from the crown that controls the phone's volume and i can't offer that there is no way for me to do it in watch os i if i could offer that my app could be competitive with an outplaying glance right now most of not most a lot of people almost most uh who could install the overcast watch app actually delete it off the watch because the now playing apple then show and it's more useful to them that has a volume control
Marco:
so some kind of volume widget i really want i also as i've said many times before and blogged about i want actual background audio playback through the av audio apis not through the crappy wk audio file player i want now playing info center and remote command center so i can actually make a useful podcast playback experience on the watch but also things like
Marco:
just more generally beyond just what I need, I think the entire system of complications was amiss and needs to be completely thrown out and rewritten.
Marco:
Whoa, why?
Casey:
Because I don't think I agree, so convince me.
Marco:
All right, so the idea of letting third-party apps integrate into the watch faces with complications, that is a good idea.
Marco:
But the current system of complications is, first of all, the way they're integrated into the watch face is way too static.
Marco:
The reason why people like you like the Siri watch face is that it doesn't do this.
Marco:
It isn't static.
Marco:
It actually is dynamically surfacing things as they matter to you.
Marco:
The entire complication system should be doing that.
Marco:
You should have watch faces that can show complications only when they're in use.
Marco:
So, for instance, I don't need to see the timer complication if I don't have an active timer running.
Marco:
But when I do have an active timer running, I want to see that on the watch face.
Marco:
Things like that.
Marco:
Basic intelligence.
Marco:
Things like what the iPhone lock screen does.
Marco:
Like, the iPhone lock screen can show a timer when it's running.
Marco:
When it isn't running, it doesn't say, set in the middle of your lock screen.
Marco:
It just doesn't have it there.
Marco:
It's smart.
Marco:
Like, I think the watch should be that smart.
Marco:
It should be as smart as the lock screen on your phone, for God's sake.
Marco:
This isn't rocket science here.
Marco:
I also think that the entire API for supplying complications with their data was built upon the, like, you know...
Marco:
watch you know series zero hardware limitations of your app really can't be running almost ever and also the idea that was added in i believe os2 which is time travel where you could spin the crown on your watch face and have it advance forward and backwards in time and you could see how your complications change over time the entire api is based on that
Marco:
And that's really complicated and cumbersome to program against.
Marco:
It doesn't make sense for all types of applications.
Marco:
It makes a lot of things way too complicated.
Marco:
And I think from the user point of view, the time travel feature failed.
Marco:
That's why in the next version of watchOS, they turned it off by default.
Marco:
So I think that entire system needs to be scrapped and rethought, both from the display side on the watch faces becoming more smart and the complication side no longer being based on this weird time travel thing.
John:
i don't know yeah what else about wwdc uh tv os oh yeah oh yeah that's the thing which is another west that they occasionally update uh i mean what i would love from tv os is if the os could leap out of that puck and fix the remote uh but i can't i mean like what's wrong with tv os now the most pressing thing that's wrong with
John:
with tv os is not the os anymore it's the devices that it runs on specifically the remote like they they did the the frame rate matching and i mean i don't think their hdr support is up to snuff yet i don't have an hdr tv but i think that that is an area of improvement but the frame rate matching and the the uh improvements to uh
John:
The playback APIs and everything, so the third-party applications can take advantage of it.
John:
Those were the last major features to make the Apple TV a viable video device.
John:
The OS, as far as it goes in running the apps and everything, it's all right.
John:
The performance is all right.
John:
The apps are okay.
John:
The single sign-on stuff, they're doing what they can, but it's more of a third-party dependency thing.
John:
They can improve that a little bit, but things that I want from the OS that it doesn't do, there's not a lot of the obvious stuff left they really have to get now into the refinement and performance and new APIs.
John:
allowing easier third-party integration to a unified experience like that kind of like watch os they really do need to rethink the entire tv os interface but the one they have is is passable like mostly people don't want to spend time hanging out there they don't want to go into the tv app the little vestige of their attempted skinny bundle deal and at some point in our future presumably not this year the apple video service is coming with all their new tv shows and movies and other stuff that apple is paying billions of dollars for like
John:
That's coming, and that's the time to totally revamp Apple TV and take your next shot at a grid of rectangular things on your screen or whatever their interface is going to be.
John:
But for now, I'd be content to just do minor refinements, and really what I want is a new remote, but I don't see that happening at WWDC.
John:
So tvOS, probably interesting if you're a third-party application vendor.
John:
Like, oh, now I can get my things to show up in the TV app, whereas previously they wouldn't.
John:
That might be kind of interesting for people who use the TV app, but I feel like that OS is in a holding pattern awaiting Apple's video service and awaiting, as far as I'm concerned, a new hardware with new remote.
Casey:
That reminds me, to kind of bring it back to iOS...
Casey:
Are we going to see any noticeable springboard changes this year?
Casey:
And when I say that, I mean in terms of like the way the home screen looks.
Casey:
Do you think we'll get maybe widgets, which I'm not so convinced are really that useful, but a lot of people seem to want them.
Casey:
Will we get widgets?
Casey:
Will we get, I don't know, something other than a grid of round recs?
Casey:
Do you think there's anything different there?
John:
No, that got booted out of iOS 12.
John:
Wasn't that the rumor?
John:
That was one of the headlining features they said was planned for iOS 12, but nope.
John:
So I'm going to say no, don't expect that.
Marco:
Yeah, I wouldn't expect that either.
Marco:
I mean, so the only real rumors we've heard are there's these cross-platform type things.
Marco:
There's the marzipan thing where allegedly iOS apps or iPad apps will be able to run on the Mac in some way, in some form.
Marco:
And then there's the thing that Gruber wrote about, the declarative UI framework, which Mark Gurman says is codenamed Amber or Ultraviolet.
Marco:
That is apparently like a new kind of like React kind of UI framework that will go across platforms, I think.
Marco:
Is it like React or Rx?
Marco:
What are those?
Marco:
Which one of those is it?
Casey:
I'm not sure, to be honest with you.
Casey:
I've heard descriptions that would make me think either.
Casey:
So I've heard descriptions that you don't have to rerun the app in order to see UI changes, which is React.
Casey:
I've heard that it's functionally reactive, which is kind of React and also definitely RxSwift.
Casey:
So I'm really honestly not sure.
Marco:
Well, anyway, that sounds like two different things.
Marco:
Mark Ehrman thinks it's two different things.
Marco:
Either of those would be awesome to get this year.
Marco:
It doesn't sound like we're getting either of them based on the little bit of rumors we've heard.
Marco:
But ultimately, I think if...
Marco:
either of those things are coming, that might coincide well with a UI overhaul on iOS, which we've been talking about for a couple of years now that it seems like it's due for one.
Marco:
Things like maybe a system-wide dark mode for OLED screens, maybe rethinking some of the
Marco:
you know system ui conventions and widgets in light of no longer being able to reach the top of screens very often and in light of just the ios 7 look being really dated and there being lots of different you know various ios design directions that were that like apple's own apps have gone in like look at something like maps that has a whole new design uh vocabulary um for some something like apple music that has a different new design vocabulary like
Marco:
it seems like we have it seems like a design a system redesign is overdue at this point but that's a really big job so if they're truly taking this as like a bug fixing year and if these cross-platform things aren't ready yet but might be ready by next year it would seem likely that most of the stuff is probably going to all hit together next year
John:
i forgot about dark mode for mac os that was the remember we talked about the uh web kit thing with the dark mode uh the expansion that that's a cosmetic things are always good if you want to justify a new os with a new version hey look the screen looks totally different you can look at these screenshots like an expansion of the dark dock and menu bar to more darkness
John:
That is an opt-in for developers with the exact same problems that we saw with the dark menu bar where people's menu bar icons weren't showing up because they didn't correctly handle the dark thing and they're drawing black on black.
John:
That could be a fun thing for Mac developers to wrangle with, and that could also be a fun thing for Mac users to experience.
John:
It's not...
John:
you know not the most complicated feature in the world and it does make a lot of sort of busy work for developers to make sure their applications look good in both dark mode and light mode but it definitely shows up in screenshots and it's a thing you can look at someone's screen and know that they're running a new version of the os which in past years has been a thing that has been sometimes difficult you know glance at someone's screen is that sierra hi sierra what which one is it's really hard to tell sometimes
Marco:
We are sponsored this week by Casper and the new Wave mattress.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
It has a patent-pending contouring system adjusting to your natural curves, and it's designed to keep its original form for years to come, no matter how much time you spend on it.
Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
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Marco:
So for $100 off your Wave purchase, visit casper.com slash ATP100 and use promo code ATP100.
Marco:
That's casper.com slash ATP100, promo code ATP100.
Marco:
Terms and conditions apply.
Marco:
Thank you so much to Casper and the new Wave mattress for supporting me while I sleep and supporting this show.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So I have a problem.
Marco:
So last summer at the beach, I brought with me my wonderfully hated 2017 15-inch MacBook Pro.
Marco:
because I had to work full-time there for like a month.
Marco:
And so I got the LG 5K, brought the laptop out, plugged it in, and was able to work full-time off of that.
Marco:
It had close performance to my...
Marco:
2014 iMac at the time so it was like all right this this is good enough for summertime okay there were a lot of downsides to it ultimately having the all usbc lifestyle even when you have four ports was still kind of annoying certain things were like certain peripherals were not reliable or were only reliable when put into a real port not the hub on the back of the monitor or things like that but you know ultimately i i got by
Marco:
But I hated that laptop for lots of other reasons and ended up, as we all know, getting rid of it, selling it, and then getting a 2015 MacBook Pro again.
Casey:
Oh, but now you can't use your fancy pants monitor.
Marco:
Bingo.
Marco:
All right.
Marco:
So I have a problem is that this summer, I will hopefully be working there a lot again.
Marco:
And I have this big monitor out there that my current computer can't plug into.
Marco:
So I have some options.
Marco:
One option is I can go and get another laptop again.
Marco:
Here's the thing.
Marco:
If they actually announce modified laptops in four days or whatever the keynote is, if they actually announce new MacBook Pros that have... Look, I'm not hoping for a return to the old keyboard or the old ports.
Marco:
I just want a changed keyboard.
Marco:
I don't care how it's changed.
Marco:
Just something, even if it's still butterfly switches...
Marco:
even if it still has the stupid arrow key even if it's a giant screen well maybe maybe not that i'm just trying to find your limits here yeah i can always count on you john like just any indication like here here's a third generation butterfly key mechanism or even better here's the scissor mechanism from the magic keyboard which is a nice halfway point between the two fields and way more reliable but hey
Marco:
I would even accept third-generation butterfly mechanism, right?
Marco:
Just some indication that they have changed the keyboard because I assume that if they change the keyboard now, it is probably going to be more reliable because it's hard to make it less reliable.
Marco:
But also, they've had all this time to see, like, okay, we have some problems with dust and stuff getting under these keys.
Marco:
So...
Marco:
hopefully if they change it now it should be good right so anyway so my option is buy a new laptop that gets announced next week but that's of course dependent on if a new laptop gets announced next week and so far we haven't seen any evidence of that being you know being likely so uh that's that's one problem i could also just use my lap my 15 inch laptop now just use it full time lots of people do uh
Marco:
i will probably develop neck and shoulder problems but i could use that full-time with no external monitor and i wouldn't love that arrangement but i could do it another option is to get a different monitor for out there something like either either like a 4k monitor which i there are 4k monitors that work with the old with the 2015 laptops and
Casey:
That's what I do at work.
Casey:
At work, I actually have two 4K monitors side by side, and it is pretty nice.
Casey:
I'd still prefer a single 5K, which I think you can also do with that 2015, actually.
Casey:
No, you can't.
Casey:
Obviously, not the one that you have.
Casey:
Are you sure?
Marco:
Yeah, I'm positive.
Casey:
Oh, okay.
Marco:
If our listeners know, if there's a 5K monitor that can work at 60Hz with the 2015 MacBook Pro, I'm happy to hear about it.
Marco:
I don't think that's possible.
Marco:
But anyway, if it is, I'd love to be wrong about that.
Marco:
But anyway, so...
Marco:
so i could just get 4k monitors even then like it's hard to find 4k monitors that like that people will officially say yes this works at 60 hertz with the you know with the 2015 laptops even the ones without the gpu like it's actually that's actually pretty hard to uh to find
Casey:
I can give you one.
Casey:
Well, not give you one, but you know what I mean.
Casey:
I have that at work, and the monitors are sufficient.
Casey:
They're not tremendous, but they're sufficient.
Casey:
And the one thing I will say while I'm thinking of it, just in case you go and do something without talking to me, which is something that you've been known to do from time to time, don't use HDMI because you will not get 60 hertz.
Marco:
Yes, I did read that.
Marco:
What is the other connector?
Marco:
Thunderbolt 2 slash mini display port.
Casey:
Well, yeah, but then I forget what it is going into the monitor.
Marco:
It goes mini DisplayPort to DisplayPort.
Casey:
Yeah, yeah, yeah.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
You're right.
Casey:
Yeah, you have to do that to get 60 hertz because I almost sent the one I have back when we got it at work until I did a little Googling and realized, oh, no, no, I can get 60 hertz out of this.
Casey:
I just need to not use HDMI.
Marco:
So a couple of people in the chat are saying that I can use the Thunderbolt 3 to Thunderbolt 2 adapter to plug in the 5K to my laptop.
Marco:
I believe they are correct.
Marco:
However, this is what the Apple stores do with the LG Ultrafine being plugged into the trash can Mac Pro because it has the same limitation.
Marco:
if you look, if you look closely at those screens, you see it's actually running at a reduced quality.
Marco:
What it's doing, so you can actually do this, because the Thunderbolt 302 adapter works bidirectionally.
Marco:
So you can plug the 302 adapter into the USB-C monitor, then you can take a Thunderbolt 2 cable and plug it into the adapter and plug it into your laptop.
Marco:
And if you do that, what will happen is the laptop, it seems to be that the laptop basically down renders, it renders it to like a roughly 4K sized buffer and then upscales it at the monitor side kind of transparently along the way.
Marco:
So it does appear from far away to be 5K, like things are the right size for it to be 5K, but
Marco:
But if you look up close, the pixels are really kind of blurry and a little bit off.
Marco:
Like it's just it's not quite right because it actually is downsampling and then put it back up.
Marco:
So you can do that with the with the adapter.
Marco:
And I have that adapter, but it's not it's not something I want to do.
Marco:
But anyway, the the option exists for me to buy a 4K monitor, have it out there.
Marco:
The problem is once this summer is done, like I don't have any use for that monitor anymore.
Marco:
Like I what am I going to do with it?
Marco:
That being said, 4K monitors aren't that expensive.
Marco:
It's one of the cheaper options I have.
Marco:
From my initial searching, it looks like I can get a 4K 24-inch, not 27-inch.
Marco:
27-inch is the wrong size for 4K.
Marco:
The right size for 4K is 24-inch.
Marco:
That is correct.
Marco:
But 24-inch 4Ks look like they're about $350 at most.
Marco:
So this actually, compared to some of these other options, is actually a pretty reasonable option.
Marco:
That's a HomePod.
Marco:
Well, anyway...
Marco:
so 24 inch monitor that's that's an option too probably the most sensible one another option is to bring my imac pro there did you see oh god where is this um it's called the lavolta imac case did you see the picture of this with like the the hipster walking through oh god yes
Marco:
I could actually look like this guy with substantially less hair and a little bit more weight, but I could look like this guy carrying my iMac with a bespoke leather and whatever that cloth is.
John:
It's got little elbow patches on the corners.
John:
Isn't that great?
John:
And I love that, like, they can't really hide the fact that the stand is just poking out and would just be, like, hitting passersby.
John:
Yeah.
John:
It's just, like, flopping around.
John:
Right.
John:
And hitting people.
John:
Like, it sticks out substantially.
Marco:
No.
Marco:
It's great.
Marco:
But the funny thing is, like, I looked at various options for, like, you know, iMac carrying cases.
Marco:
And this thing is only, like, $60.
Marco:
And to get, like, a full-size padded one that actually, like, sits around the entire thing is, like, $200.
Marco:
Oh.
John:
This is actually carrying case.
John:
This is why you should all be insane like me and save your original boxes, because if you want to transport your iMac safely, you put it back in the original box, the original packing material.
John:
And guess what?
John:
You can transport it safely.
Marco:
I know I have mine, too, but that's massive.
Marco:
Like the original box is so big that big.
Marco:
It's tapered.
John:
it's yeah it's still pretty massive anyway that's i mean honestly like if you want to transport this thing safely and not be like worrying about it and like because this isn't going to protect the thing if you you know shove it in the back of your car with a bunch of other crap you need to put it in something about the size of the original box that's it like there's no there's no slimmer version that protects your thing just as much as the
Marco:
That's true.
Marco:
So anyway, that is an option.
Marco:
I could just bring my iMac there, but the problem with that, besides the fact that I have to look like this guy, is that... Basically, my concern would be, what if I either damage it, which would be very expensive, or what if I...
Marco:
make it less reliable in some way like what if i like slightly it's filled with salt air yeah yeah like what if i like slightly jostle something inside or some component flakes out just a little bit and then it's like a little bit less reliable for the next few years that i'm trying to use it like i would never forgive myself if that happened i would worry more about the salt air than the transport like honestly like i mean i don't i guess probably have air conditioning on clothes but like it is a more hostile environment for electronics no question
Marco:
very yes no like everything out there like anything made of metal out there dies in like three years like everything like you know appliances you know hardware on doors locks like everything it's like everything's crazy out there so yeah so like i don't think i want to bring my expensive iMac pro there for lots of reasons
Marco:
so anyway that that option i don't love another option would be to like like get like a cheap used iMac or like maybe like upgrade tiff now and bring her old one there like there there are things i could do but then it's like but i don't want a computer to be sitting there all year but i'm not using it like the whole rest of the year there's no reason for it to be there sell it at the end of the summer as is your way but if that's the option i might as well do the same thing with a laptop
John:
yeah but but i mean like don't aren't you like the laptop isn't just about like the monitor connection it's also about like the thing running hot and making noise and potentially downclocking honestly i think if you're going to spend substantial time there and you like working on a big screen that like a cheaper a cheap 5k iMac seems like the obvious answer and what you do with it when you're done with the season whether you just leave it there and come back to it the next summer or like
John:
you know have it shipped there and pack it when you leave the house pack it up in its original box and shove it somewhere like that just seems better than trying to find some kind of laptop arrangement that's going to work for you i don't know i mean especially as like you know are you trying to save you're trying to save money by using your existing laptop with just a monitor and then just leaving like just just get the cheap iMac it seems that that's my vote for the path of least resistance that will make you to have the fewest compromises while you're there and
Marco:
it's not that much more expensive you're not you're not getting another iMac pro for it right if i didn't already have the 5k monitor out there i think that that seems like a better option because i already have it out there like it seems like well what else like i don't i don't have any use for that monitor here you're gonna go out there and you're gonna sell it that's what you're gonna do
Marco:
I don't know.
Marco:
I'm mostly just kind of annoyed.
Marco:
If I have to end up buying for this purpose another one of the new laptops that I hate, imagine if Casey had to buy another BMW right now.
Marco:
like cuts deep right yeah you really don't want to right like even if that might be the most sensible option for for what your stated priorities and needs are you still don't want to do it right like that's kind of how that's kind of how i feel about like ideally i i think the actual option i should take is probably to do exactly what i did last summer which is buy the highest end 15 inch i can get use it for the summer and then sell it or hopefully use it as my main one if i can tolerate it
John:
that's what i should do but i just can't bear to do that like this is why i hope they get updated but wouldn't you rather be using an imac like you're not you don't need the portability aspect of it right wouldn't you rather be using an imac all summer and sell that at the end than use a weird laptop hydra arrangement
Marco:
I suppose I would, but the needs of my life are I do need a laptop on a semi-frequent basis.
Marco:
So I do need to maintain a laptop.
Marco:
It doesn't need to be the highest-end laptop in the world, but I do need a laptop.
Marco:
So if I'm going to have a laptop anyway...
Marco:
then I might as well have a laptop that can also serve this role because it's just a way more efficient allocation of computing resources and number of systems to maintain and everything than trying to have a desktop out there and desktop at home and my laptop.
Marco:
That's getting a little bit crazy.
Marco:
We'll get to that actually in the SKTP, but I don't think I want a whole additional Mac.
Marco:
I don't need...
John:
You've got a whole additional refrigerator and a whole additional washing machine.
John:
You've got a whole additional house.
John:
This is the problem.
John:
I found the root problem.
Marco:
There's actually two refrigerators in it.
Marco:
It came with two.
Marco:
One of them was apparently used for fish.
Marco:
And so we don't use that.
Marco:
So there's a second fridge in the living room.
Marco:
The fish fridge.
Marco:
It's really high class.
Marco:
Yes.
Marco:
And we just, like, leave it closed all the time because we made the mistake of opening it a couple times and trying to clean it.
Marco:
And believe me, this cannot be cleaned.
Marco:
We have tried.
Marco:
We also tried giving it away.
Marco:
Surprise!
John:
Nobody wants it.
John:
No one wants the fish fridge.
John:
Yes.
John:
Anyway.
John:
Why don't you just put it outside and then come back next year and it'll just be slowly crumbling into, you know, rusty metal shards.
Marco:
That's not a bad idea.
Marco:
Yeah, take advantage of the corrosion.
Marco:
Anyway, so that's my beach computer problem.
Marco:
This is admittedly like massive first world problem, you know, white wine, etc.
Marco:
But I do think it's interesting to consider and hopefully next week these concerns will become moot as they release the laptop of my dreams.
Marco:
But I'm not sure how likely that is.
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
I think if it were me, I would just get a 4K monitor.
Casey:
And you won't like it, but it'll be sufficient.
Casey:
And I looked up how much the one I have at work is, and it's $250.
Casey:
And I'm pretty cheap.
Casey:
And even I, were I in this situation, I would just plunk down $250 and call it a day.
Marco:
Or you could have iCloud storage for like 20 years.
Yeah.
Casey:
anyway ask atp cw bennett writes what would be the best strategy to accidentally bump into you guys at wwdc i kept my eyes open for you last year but had no luck uh if you're looking for marco go to uh southern policy if you're looking for john or well if you're looking for me social policy so sorry or if it's evening the beer and sausage place down the street
Casey:
If you're looking for John, look in the sessions.
Casey:
And if you're looking for me, basically in between social policy or possibly layers, actually, because I'll be I'll be boinging through layers as well.
Casey:
I'm going to just be like a Tasmanian devil.
Casey:
But.
Casey:
um yeah any of those three places are i guess four if you include uh the beer the beer place um that's the best bet for the three of us i reckon and uh i will also reiterate as we do every year if you happen to see one of us in the streets and in in a session in social policy wherever the case may be do please feel free to say hi um
Casey:
We may or may not be able to talk for more than a moment, especially if we're running between sessions or something like that.
Casey:
So please don't take offense if we're quick.
Casey:
But please say hi.
Casey:
I love it when people say hi and say, you know, hey, I really like the show.
Casey:
That makes me feel super good.
Casey:
And this is the one week a year where I get to pretend like I'm famous and it's super fun.
Casey:
And then I'm a nobody, just like always, which is also super fun.
Casey:
So please feel free to say hi.
Casey:
I think all three of us will probably have stickers.
Casey:
Is that right, gentlemen?
Casey:
Yeah.
John:
Yeah, I wanted to talk about that now because I'm going to tweet about this too, but it's easier to express this without sounding like a jerk.
John:
So I'm definitely going to have stickers, and if you see me and you want a sticker, I will just give you one.
John:
I will have ATP stickers.
John:
I will also have a small amount of hypercritical stickers, which kind of look like the logo on the website that I never update.
John:
I will post pictures of these, and the pictures are important because...
John:
Don't ask for a sticker unless you want the specific stickers that I have because you want to stick it on something.
John:
Don't just ask for one because it sounds like it might be neat to have a sticker, right?
John:
Because I have a limited quantity.
John:
And don't feel like you have to take a sticker to be polite.
John:
If you don't want a sticker, do not ask for a sticker.
John:
And how can you tell whether you want them?
John:
Watch my Twitter feed, and I will show you pictures of the stickers.
John:
And if you don't want that sticker...
John:
do not ask for a sticker i feel like when you have stickers like oh sure i'll take a sticker like you feel like you get lots of swag from like vendors and other things like yeah i'll take a sticker or whatever don't because these are surprisingly expensive and people actually do want them so if you don't want these stickers because they're ugly or stupid i will not be offended just merely do not ask for one
Marco:
i will say the exact opposite i went to sticker mule last year before a couple weeks before the show and bought like the smallest quantity i could which i think was like 200 of them and i still have like 180 of them after a whole year so that's not the smallest quantity because i got less than that oh well whatever it is by all means if you see me even if you don't want a sticker ask for a sticker and you can take margo needs to get rid of his stickers
John:
I have too many stickers, so please, for the love of God, take these.
John:
Yeah, and at the live show, I'll probably also put a bunch of stickers out for people to just grab, but I would also say, like, don't grab them if you don't want the sticker.
John:
Like, some people are not sticker people.
John:
Like, I don't put stickers on things, so I'm not going to take a sticker.
John:
But other people really are sticker people, and they do want them, and they're going to stick them on a laptop.
John:
Those people should have the stickers.
Casey:
Wow.
Casey:
Leave it to John to have rules about whether or not you're allowed to get a sticker from him.
John:
I'm just saying, sometimes people feel like they have to take a sticker to be polite, even though they're like, what the hell am I going to do with this?
John:
And they just chuck it, right?
John:
Don't do that.
John:
I will not be offended if you don't want my stickers.
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
I mean, don't take my stickers if you're just going to throw them away.
Marco:
I mean, I can throw them away.
Marco:
Save us the trouble.
Casey:
oh man and any other thoughts about where we can be found i mean obviously we'll have our um monday night show the relay thing is wednesday is that right talk show tuesday uh app camp thing wednesday we'll be at all those places we'll be at our own live show surprise we'll all be at the talk show we'll all be at the relay thing so if you go to any of those things you will probably see us
Casey:
excellent pat murphy writes do any of you use multiple machines for development and if so do you use any automation for that environment for example i understand marco does most of his dev work on a mac on an imac uh but he takes his laptop when he goes out to wwc and i think he has said he does development while on the road do you just manually copy your working directories and manually keep all the tool chains in sync or do you use drop dropbox or icloud gasp says pat murphy
Casey:
to sync folders, or perhaps just do get syncs across machines.
Casey:
So I do development on my iMac, on my work computer, and on my MacBook Durable.
Casey:
And I basically just use Git, and then everything else is manual.
Casey:
That may or may not be the bestest approach in the entire world, but that's what works for me.
Casey:
Marco, what do you do for your 13 different laptops that you're switching out every minute?
Marco:
uh i i'm for the most part until very recently i was doing what you do which is just have a different git checkout on the local home directory of each machine and like for various projects i'm working on and like just use git as the you know the merging and hosting platform to keep everything in sync
Marco:
Which, of course, has the downside of like you have to commit everything to get it to sync to another machine.
Marco:
So like if you if you're on your desktop and you got to run and you want to take your laptop and start working on stuff, you have to make sure everything's committed and pushed before you can take your laptop.
Marco:
And that's kind of cumbersome and annoying and is is kind of violating like the purpose of the version control system.
Marco:
Like it kind of messes up the semantics of what those things mean and when you should and shouldn't be using them and things like that.
Marco:
So, one thing that underscore David Smith told me on Under the Radar forever ago, and he said it and I was like, what?
Marco:
That's crazy.
Marco:
He said he actually keeps his Git checkouts in Dropbox.
Marco:
And so he could just pick up his laptop or whatever and just start working on the same checkout he was working on his desktop.
Marco:
And it just syncs because it's Dropbox.
Marco:
And, you know, still using Git for its version control, but using Dropbox as the, like, sync mechanism between his own machines.
Marco:
And I thought that was the craziest thing in the world.
John:
why did you think that was crazy it just seemed like it was like i don't know it seemed like it shouldn't work right like it just seemed like it seemed like it was crossing some kind of weird line it's just poor man it's just the the web 3.0 version of nfs mounts back in the old days we'd have our stuff in a common place and we'd nfs mounted on all our machines and it was the same everywhere and how is this it's like a network file system where it's not here but it's somewhere it's exactly the same thing only dropbox is like dumber and slower and more loosely coupled
Marco:
Well, anyway, I started doing that, like, last week.
Marco:
And it's really cool, actually.
Marco:
Like, I gotta say, it actually works.
Marco:
Props to underscore.
Marco:
It sounded crazy, but it's actually really nice.
Marco:
The only downside I found is...
Marco:
that when I work on the project between my iMac and my laptop, because the screen sizes are so different, I get really weird window sizing when the Xcode... I think it's the XC user file, whichever one of the project files that you would never commit to a Git repository, but it's like your local window settings.
Marco:
That file is now syncing, so it kind of makes weird things happen when you go between screen sizes.
Marco:
And I might try to look up some hack to maybe make that file not sync or something, but otherwise...
Marco:
It's pretty cool.
Marco:
Like having being able to just take my laptop and just continue what I was doing without anything like like without any effort, really.
Marco:
That's really cool.
John:
A word of warning, though, when you're doing any specifically with Dropbox, because it isn't NFS in the end.
John:
In the end, it is a different thing with this offline process that's making a best effort to sink your crap out.
John:
You will make Dropbox cry if you give it too many files.
John:
So apparently Mark was using with Xcode and his projects and it's working out.
John:
But I can tell you from experience, if you think you're going to do node development and do a non-trivial NPM install and that's going to sync to your other Mac.
John:
you're in for a long, sad wait.
John:
So there are limits, and you should kind of know what they are before you commit to putting your substantial Git repo plus your entire node modules directory on Dropbox and have it magically syncs to another Mac.
John:
It will eventually, but you will die waiting for it to happen.
Marco:
I've also been slowly moving as much as I could about my local Mac setup to Dropbox.
Marco:
So for instance, I use a bunch of tools from Homebrew, and I now have a shell script that I maintain in Dropbox that is like my Homebrew setup script to install and configure the various packages and tools that I use there.
Marco:
And that way I can run it on any new Mac installation or new Mac itself, and it sets everything up in a consistent way.
Marco:
Also...
Marco:
Sometimes like when I upgrade my OS, that kind of stuff gets hosed for some reason, even though it supposedly shouldn't, but it just does.
Marco:
And so it's also really nice to be able to uninstall Homebrew on a Mac where it's not quite working right and just run that script and have a whole thing set up perfectly clean again.
Marco:
That's really nice.
Marco:
Similarly, I also now put things like the Nginx configuration, like where you have Nginx include the list of sites and you have like a bunch of files each with one site configuration in them.
Marco:
that sites directory is now in Dropbox for me.
Marco:
So when I have local development where I like, you know, my local development for Overcast versus like any other like, you know, little CMS things I might be working on, I can have all those things be synced up.
Marco:
And then finally, my bash profile on each machine that I use, I include a file that's on Dropbox for that too.
Marco:
So I can have the same bash aliases and settings and stuff like that on all my machines.
Casey:
Also worth noting that if you are living in that terrible world that I used to live in where you're doing all your work in VMs, one thing I used to do years ago when I was bouncing my VMs between computers was just getting like an external hard drive.
Casey:
And at this point, this is before SSDs were affordable.
Casey:
But just get an external hard drive, preferably an SSD, and leave your VMs on there and just plug it into whatever computer you happen to be working with.
Casey:
Obviously, there's fragility there because if you jostle that connection even the littlest bit and it falls down, then you're going to have a real world of hurt.
Casey:
But by and large, if your computers are reasonably stationary when you're actively using them, that ends up working out really well too.
Marco:
Thanks to our sponsors this week, Casper, Squarespace, and Eero.
Marco:
And we'll talk to you next week.
Marco:
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 so that's casey list m-a-r-c-o-a-r-m-n-t marco armen s-i-r-a-c-u-s-a syracusa it's accidental they did it
Casey:
So Casey, how's your car doing?
Marco:
Where is your car right now?
Casey:
My car has been at BMW since...
Casey:
thursday maybe wednesday i forget exactly what day i dropped it off um i it went in for a litany of problems i think it went in the day after we recorded so thursday it doesn't really matter it went in for a a hum at about 75 indicated miles an hour which is actually about 70 miles an hour
Casey:
It went in for slow tire leak.
Casey:
It went in for AC fans not working.
Casey:
It went in for brake fluid flush, which is a maintenance item.
Casey:
And it went in for the brakes squealing like hell when I took off.
Casey:
So I got the call Friday that the damage is $5,000.
Casey:
The car, last I looked several months ago, is worth $10,000 or thereabouts.
Casey:
So, as it turns out, the brakes are the brake shoes within the drum brake that is the emergency brake that lives within the disc brakes.
Casey:
So for a long time, it's not the case anymore, but for a long time, four-wheel disc cars actually had little tiny drum brakes kind of within the disc brakes as the emergency brake.
Casey:
Now, most of these are electronic, and they'll actually—I believe the caliper just squeezes the brake disc.
Casey:
And you can hear that whirring on Aaron's car.
Casey:
When you hit the emergency brake, you hear bzzz as it's grabbing the disc.
Casey:
But anyway—
John:
For me, the brake shoes... Are you e-braking on Aaron's car, like drifting it around the neighborhood?
John:
No, no, no.
John:
What time do you have occasion to engage the parking brake while the wheels are spinning?
John:
Please tell me.
Casey:
No, no, no.
Casey:
It's not when the wheels are spinning.
Casey:
I'm saying you can hear the parking brake engage.
John:
When you stop the car and engage the parking brake, you hear the electric motor go... Oh, I thought you heard the wheel spinning underneath the gripping calipers as you engage the parking brake at 30 miles an hour going around a right-hand turn.
Casey:
No, not at all.
Casey:
So the brake shoes needed to get replaced.
Casey:
And I was told, and I'm quoting, that's not a normal failure item, which made me laugh more than I can tell you, to which my immediate response was, that is everything in this car.
Casey:
Everything in this car has been not a normal failure.
John:
It sounds like they have a list of items in your car that they expect to fail.
John:
So you should ask to see that list.
Casey:
Fair.
Casey:
But actually, the reason this is relevant is because they said they needed to wait for those to come in because they don't even keep them in stock because they never break.
Casey:
Anyway, that so they needed to repair that.
Casey:
I told them to go ahead and do that.
Casey:
The the blower issue was apparently a warranty.
Casey:
I think it was a warranty fix.
Casey:
I haven't picked up the car yet, but it is ready is a warranty fix.
Casey:
So I don't think I was charged for that.
Casey:
The slow tire leak is a cracked wheel.
Casey:
what how like the rim apparently so i told them so they wanted five hundred dollars to replace that and to which i said absolutely not don't do it i'll deal with the slow leak my accords wheels will cost more than five hundred dollars that sounds like a bargain
Casey:
Oh, I didn't know that.
Casey:
That makes me feel slightly better, but I still don't want them to do it.
Casey:
What was the, oh, the brake fluid, you know, whatever, that's normal wear and tear.
Casey:
And then finally, the hum at 75 miles an hour indicated is apparently my front differential, which is shot.
Casey:
I don't know why.
Casey:
I don't know what specifically.
Casey:
I asked what specifically, and I got kind of a in response.
Casey:
It's filled with metal confetti.
Casey:
Yeah, basically.
Casey:
So I told them, don't fix the front diff.
Casey:
Don't replace the wheel.
Casey:
And I'm not sure what my plan is from here.
Casey:
But I am going to either bring it to CarMax and see what they'll give me and, you know, just present it as is and see what they'll give me.
Casey:
Or maybe I will go to a local non-BMW dealer, but like a local BMW quote unquote specialist and see if that's demonstrably cheaper than repairing it at BMW.
Casey:
But my current intention is probably the moment I come back from DubDub is to attempt to sell it as is and then probably replace it with a brand new Wrangler.
Marco:
Yeah, what's the least you can get out of it?
Marco:
What's the least you can get out of paying for the current batch of repairs?
Marco:
I assume you're going to have to pay for some of these, right?
Casey:
Oh, yeah.
Casey:
So I'm definitely in for about $750 for the brakes.
Casey:
Oh, that's it?
Casey:
Yeah, that's exactly what I said.
Marco:
Yeah, but out of $5,000.
Casey:
Preposterous, but yeah.
Casey:
So I'm in for the brake pads.
Casey:
I'm in for the brake fluid.
Casey:
And I'm in, of course, they insisted on doing a cabin air filter, and I'm too lazy to argue with them, and that was probably $3,000.
Casey:
But anyway...
Casey:
So I'm in for, like, basic wear and tear stuff in the brakes, and that was $750.
Casey:
So if I don't do the wheel and I don't do the front differential, I'm still, quote-unquote, saving, you know, what, $4,000 or thereabouts for you.
Casey:
And so...
Casey:
My hope is I can find a way to unload this car.
Casey:
And by the way, I'm not entirely convinced it really does need a differential.
Casey:
I think that's potentially not the case.
Casey:
But one way or another, I'm going to attempt to unload the car and take that money and apply it to probably a Wrangler, but I'm not 100% sure that's where I'll end up.
Casey:
But my thought is I am tired of performance cars because I always break them.
Casey:
I don't know how, but I always do.
Casey:
German cars are unaffordable to maintain, so I don't want to deal with that.
Casey:
I don't really have a lot of interesting options in German performance cars anyway because I will end up divorced if I buy another BMW.
Casey:
The Audi is not as fast as I would like.
Casey:
The GTI is, from everything I'm told, pretty much perfect, but it's German and it's front-wheel drive, and I'll probably drive one before I commit.
Casey:
And then the Golf R is no sunroof and also fast in German.
Casey:
And from what I understand, not as good as the GTI anyway, so that's not happening.
Casey:
I'm not buying a Model 3 because it's too much money.
Casey:
I'm not buying a Quadrifoglio because it's too much money and it will always break.
Casey:
So my thought is, as we've discussed previously, and I will cut it short here, just eschew all performance and luxury and just get a box on wheels and enjoy it for what it is.
John:
Well, in that case, you might as well get on a cord.
John:
It's better.
John:
With a stick shift and it's fun.
John:
Although the new one is ugly, so I feel for you here.
Casey:
Yeah, the new ones are not good looking.
Casey:
And I really did kick that idea around for a fleeting moment.
John:
You should test drive it.
John:
You're going to test drive the GTI.
John:
You should also test drive a stick shift of the cord if you can find one.
John:
Don't bother test driving the automatics because they're gross.
Casey:
I've been in an automatic turbo Accord, a brand new one, and it was reasonably quick.
Casey:
If you find me a stick shift Accord to try in Richmond, I will happily go do it.
John:
You can find one.
Casey:
I'm not even going to bother trying because it won't exist.
Marco:
It absolutely won't exist.
Marco:
Well, I mean, look, I think...
Marco:
What you have here, like, your problems with your current car are substantial and possibly fatal for you owning the car.
Marco:
That's fine.
Marco:
I'm not going to disagree with you there.
Marco:
I will caution you against rushing into a new choice.
Marco:
Even though I know you've been waffling about possibly getting a new slash different car for a while now, this is like being caused by a sudden impetus that you suddenly need something like now, right?
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
right i given how much you care about your car and how much enjoyment you get out of your car i don't think you should rush into whatever you buy next so that being said i mean i don't know how i don't know what your situation will be like if you take this car home like how operable it will still remain uh for a while well if it if it dies like what do you like can can you get can you just be a one car family for a few weeks while you test drive other other stuff like you know so you have things like that to worry about um but
Marco:
Ultimately, you do have a similar problem to my beach computer thing, which is like, I really so badly don't want to buy another one of these new generational laptops if it isn't fixed.
Marco:
And you so badly don't want to buy another German performance car.
Marco:
But ultimately...
Marco:
My best solution is to just buy one of those laptops, and your way to get most of what you want, the most of what you want, is to get another German sports car, probably from BMW.
Marco:
Oh, it's never happening.
Marco:
In both ways, it's kind of a question of whether you can overcome...
Marco:
how mad you are at them or, or your, your like, you know, identity being tied currently to like really hating them.
Marco:
Like that's like, you know, how, how bad is it if I, the, the master of the 2015 MacBook pro, like the biggest advocate decide in like a month, Oh, I actually need to need a new one instead.
Marco:
Like that's, that's, I'm trying to avoid that for lots of reasons, but one of them is like identity and just how much I hated the previous ones.
Marco:
Right.
Marco:
So like if you're, you know, looking at this, trying to look at this a little bit more objectively, like,
Marco:
it really does seem like you are jumping through quite a lot of hoops to avoid the option of leasing something.
Marco:
Not necessarily from BMW, but just to consider the option of leasing something because that is how you get high-performance cars without having to deal with maintaining them over time.
Casey:
Yeah, and that's true.
Casey:
But let's assume I wanted to lease.
Casey:
I'm not going to lease some BMW because I need a break from it.
Casey:
Even if that is the empirically correct answer, I just need a break from it.
Marco:
Great thing about a lease, it's three years.
Marco:
So you can lease something now, realize you miss having a stick shift German car, and go back to it in three years.
Marco:
if you can still find one.
Casey:
Yeah, I mean, that may be.
Casey:
But even if I have leasing on the table, the only thing I can think of that would maybe re-enter the discussion is maybe the Alpha, and it's still more expensive.
Casey:
It's too expensive for what I want to pay, even for a lease.
Casey:
So I don't think that empirically changes anything.
Casey:
And for Jeep, the residuals are so damn high, it makes the lease terrible, doesn't it?
Casey:
Or do I have that backwards?
Yeah.
Marco:
A high residual is good.
Marco:
Residual is what percentage of the price it is worth at the end of the lease.
Marco:
So a good residual is like in the 60s generally.
Marco:
You want it to be worth about 60% of its original value at the end of the lease.
Marco:
That means you're paying over the span of three years 40% of the cost.
Marco:
That's something in the good-ish range among the cars that I tend to lease.
Marco:
Something that's better, like something like a Honda or something Japanese, that probably has even better residuals if I had to guess, but I haven't looked.
Marco:
But, yeah, that's like typically like 60 percent kind of thing is what you would get on like a hard to maintain German fast car.
Casey:
Well, and the thing is, and so like a lot of people, as I've been talking more and more about Wranglers, a lot of people have been saying like, oh, they're so unreliable.
Casey:
They're so unreliable.
Casey:
Maybe.
Casey:
But let's assume for the sake of discussion.
Marco:
Oh, they are.
Casey:
Yeah.
Casey:
Let's assume for the sake of discussion that that is a fact, which I disagree with.
Casey:
Let's assume that Wranglers are unequivocally and unquestionably unreliable.
Casey:
The critical difference that nobody seems to be thinking about is that doing a front differential for the sake of conversation, maybe this is wrong, but for the sake of conversation, doing a front differential on a Wrangler has got to be like a third the cost of doing it on a 335 because it's a domestic car where all the parts are here.
Casey:
They're already here.
Casey:
All the parts are cheaper.
Casey:
The labor is presumably either the same or cheaper.
Casey:
And so it's going to be much, much, much cheaper.
Casey:
Even if it's broken all the time, it's still going to be way cheaper to fix the way I figure it.
Casey:
So, yeah, I understand that it may or may not be reliable.
Casey:
Now, again, my anecdata says that it's extremely reliable because Dad has had three across 30 years and they've all been super reliable.
Casey:
But admittedly, anecdata.
Casey:
So in either way, I'll have a warranty, which, of course, would be true of any new car.
Casey:
And that's actually one thing that's compelling about the VWs is they have like a six or seven year bumper to bumper warranty now is a kind of oops from diesel gate.
Casey:
So that is slightly compelling about the Volkswagens.
Casey:
But I don't know.
Casey:
I don't know what I want to do.
Casey:
I need to test drive a bunch of stuff, but I don't have the time to do it, especially now because I'm about to go out of town.
Casey:
But I'm deeply, deeply frustrated with my BMW and we have crossed the point of no return, I think.
Casey:
So it is getting sold sooner rather than later.
Casey:
The question is, as Marco said earlier, will I jump immediately into something else or not?
Casey:
And I don't think that I will.
Casey:
And the main reason I don't think I will...
Casey:
is that just like with the 335 i want a very particular set of options on this hypothetical wrangler and when i looked a few days ago there were precisely three wranglers with this set of options within 150 miles of me uh two of that or no all three of them i believe were spoken for and they were all more expensive than i wanted please say all three of them were white
Casey:
No, I don't.
Casey:
Which computer was I looking at this on?
Casey:
Hold on.
Casey:
I can tell you because I think I took a screenshot.
Casey:
Yes, I did.
Casey:
It was one blue and two gray.
Casey:
Actually, that might be one blue, one light gray, one dark gray, but no whites.
Marco:
How light is the gray?
Casey:
I don't know.
Casey:
It's normal gray.
Casey:
Very light gray.
Casey:
It's not that light.
Marco:
No, it actually does look fairly reasonable in white, I got to say.
Casey:
I actually think it looks terrible in white, but this is only via pictures.
Casey:
I really and truly think that.
Marco:
No, but I think, you know, again, I do think, you know, don't rush into this.
Marco:
That being said, though, you know, if you are going, you know, you mentioned you want to sell the BMW, and then did I understand correctly that you might then not buy something immediately, that you might go down to one car for a little while?
Casey:
Yes.
Casey:
So I my intention is to buy if I sell like my hypothetical wherein I sell the BMW within days of returning back here after dub dub.
Casey:
I think I would sell the BMW post haste so it doesn't explode on me.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Marco:
Well, then see, here's the thing, though.
Marco:
It's probably fairly stable.
Marco:
If you don't drive it that much, it's not going to explode in your garage.
Marco:
You are in a much better bargaining position to apply that to a trade-in than you are to try to sell it in its needing expense state to anybody.
Marco:
Who's going to buy it like that?
Marco:
But if you are in the process of buying or leasing a new vehicle, the dealer has a strong incentive to take your trade-in.
Marco:
So I think you are in a much better negotiating position using that as a trade-in than trying to sell it outside of a purchase.
Casey:
That is a really good point I hadn't considered.
Casey:
All right, fair enough.
Casey:
So maybe it'll just get parked and collect dust until I find a replacement.
John:
Put it up on blocks in your front yard.
Marco:
Yeah, right.
Marco:
Yeah, make sure it can drive onto the lot of the place you're buying it from.
Marco:
That's all you need to do.
Marco:
Drive onto the lot, and then when they go out to check it, you need to start.
Marco:
That's it.
Casey:
Yeah, well, and that's the thing.
Casey:
That's why it fixed the screaming e-brake is because the second you moved the car, it was... And so it was clear that that was going to have to be fixed if I wanted to get more than $10 for this thing.
Casey:
So yeah, so we'll see what happens.
Casey:
I mean, it's first world problems, but it's frustrating.
Casey:
Man, is it frustrating.
Marco:
Yeah, take your time.
Marco:
We'll see.
Marco:
Test drive everything.
Marco:
And really, I strongly suggest that you consider...
Marco:
the option of leasing you know i i know you have a lot of objections to it on like i do principal grounds but it really does solve a lot of your problems and i think overall once you could swallow that bitter pill of damn it i'm leasing like you know and it's against everything i believe in once you can get past that everything else about it i think would make you a lot happier
Casey:
Maybe, yeah, but I still don't know what I would lease.
Casey:
Like, I really honestly don't.
Marco:
Well, but your options greatly expand once that option is on the table.
Marco:
Does it, though?
Marco:
Oh, yeah.
Marco:
Once leasing is on the table, then you can get, quote, unreliable brands.
Marco:
Or brands that you wouldn't want to be responsible for after they're three years old.
Marco:
You can get that.
Marco:
Things like the warranty stop mattering.
Marco:
Things like reliability and maintenance costs just stops mattering.
Casey:
Yeah, but again, I don't want to get a BMW.
Casey:
So your lease idea would fix the BMW problem, except I am petulantly refusing to get a BMW.
Casey:
So then I still don't know what it really buys me.
Casey:
You know what I mean?
Marco:
Obviously, that would be the most extreme example of why it would be beneficial to you because you could totally erase the maintenance headache from BMW.
Marco:
100%.
Marco:
But also, if you're concerned about reliability for things like Audi or Alpha or VW, that does help you on those fronts as well.
Marco:
Or even, heck, even Jeep.
Marco:
If they're known to be unreliable, yeah, they are probably cheaper to service than the BMW, but...
Marco:
That's still something you probably want to be dealing with.
Marco:
And so if you can lease one, even better.
Marco:
That being said, if you're going to buy one, I think if you're going to buy one and your main justification for buying it is long term value, you should be buying used.
Casey:
I agree.
Casey:
I 100,000% agree.
Casey:
But the problem I'm running into with the Wrangler is the same damn problem that I box myself into a corner with Aaron's car, which is really two problems.
Casey:
Number one, I refuse to buy a car without CarPlay.
Casey:
Yes, I know I could do some aftermarket mumbo jumbo, but I am way too old and way too busy and way too boring for that.
Casey:
Don't want to deal with it.
Casey:
Number two, both the Volvo and the Wrangler just got redesigned.
Casey:
And so I don't want the old and busted design.
Casey:
I want the new hotness design.
Casey:
But even more importantly than that, because my BMW was bought when the F30 was brand new and mine's an E90.
Casey:
So I've bought the old and busted design.
Casey:
And by and large, I stand by it for the BMW.
Casey:
But the problem is, is that I really would like CarPlay.
Casey:
And the only way to get CarPlay in either of these cars is to get the brand new version.
Casey:
And so that's why I want to buy new.
Marco:
Honestly, that's a reasonable reason.
Casey:
But I totally agree with you.
Casey:
You're not wrong that buying used is the more appropriate answer.
Casey:
Especially, actually, if I were to go BMW, because then I could get a CPO BMW, which would have an even better warranty than a brand new one would.
Casey:
But yeah, in this particular case, it's not going to work out.
Marco:
Well...
Marco:
If leasing can help you get what you want, strongly consider it.
Casey:
Yeah, it's a fair point.
Casey:
I think the most useful tidbit you've given me, though, is to not insta-sell the BMW.
Casey:
To not pull a Marco in a Marco five years ago.
Marco:
That's a trade-in, not a sale.
Marco:
Because of the condition it's in and because you do intend to have another car, use that.
Marco:
Use it as a trade-in.
Marco:
No dealer is going to give you jack crap for it as a regular purchase from you.
Marco:
But as a trade in, you'll get something for it.
Casey:
Yeah, that's fair.
Marco:
And you don't want to deal with individuals with that because then you're selling somebody a broken car like they're going to know like that's going to it's going to cause problems for you.
Marco:
so you definitely want like you want because when you know when a dealer buys a car as as old as that they're not going to keep it on their lot and resell they're going to send it to an auction thing and they're going to get some fixed price for it and that's it it's out of their hands it's not your problem it's not their problem it's just gone it just vanishes and it's just your trade-in value that's it that's the way to do it you do not want to sell to an individual or anything like that like just use it as a trade-in and then it's the problem just disappears